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HENRY HOUSSAYE 

CLEOPATRA 

A STUDY 

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 

A. F. D. 

AUTHORIZED EDITION 



# 



NEW- YORK 
DUPRAT & CO. 

1890 



CLEOPATRA 



HENRY HOUSSAYE 

CLEOPATRA 

A STUDY 

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 

A. F. D. 



AUTHORIZED EDITION 




NEW^YORK 
DUPRAT & CO. 

1890 



J] 



*J 



Copyright, 1890, by Duprat & Co. 



THE DE VINNE PRE88. 



Calmann Levy, Editeur, 

3, rue Auber, 3. 

Paris, le 21 Aout, 1890. 

Messieurs et Chers Confreres: 

Nous venons de recevoir votre cheque, et nous vous 
envoyons en echange, par la presente lettre, tant en 
notre nom qu'au nom de Pauteur, Pautorisation ex- 
clusive de publier aux Etats-Unis, une traduction de 
Petude de Mr. Henry Houssaye sur Cleopatre. 

Nous saisissons avec empressement cette occasion de 
rendre hommage a la parfaite correction de vos pro- 
cedes. Vous donnez un exemple qui vous honore fort, 
et dont nous vous savons d'autant plus gre, que nous 
aimons a croire qu'il sera suivi. 

Agreez, Messieurs et chers confreres, mes salutations 
empressees. 

Paul Calmann Levy. 
MM. Duprat & Co., 

New-York. 



CLEOPATRA. 



i. 



HFTER an existence of forty or fifty centuries, 
the empire of Egypt was expiring under the 
"evil eye" of the Romans. The Greek 
dynasty, which had given to the country a new 
strength and reviving brilliancy, had exhausted itself 
in debauchery, crimes, and civil wars. It was now sus- 
tained only by the good-will of Rome, whose fatal pro- 
tection was bought at a high price, and who still 
designed to tolerate, for a time, at least, the indepen- 
dence of Egypt. Freed from nearly all military service 
by the introduction of Hellenic and Gallic mercenaries 
the Egyptians had lost their warlike habits. They had 
suffered so many invasions and submitted to so many 
foreign dominations that all that remained for patriotism 
was the religion of their ancestors. Little mattered it 
to them, born servile and used to despotism, whether 

9 



io CLEOPATRA, 

they were governed by a Greek king or a Roman pro- 
consul — they would give not an ear of corn less, nor 
receive a blow the more. 

Her glory eclipsed and her power decayed, Egypt 
still possessed her marvelous wealth. Agriculture, 
manufactures, and commerce poured into Alexandria a 
triple wave of gold. Egypt had erewhile supplied Greece 
and Asia Minor with corn ; it remained the inex- 
haustible granery of the Mediterranean basin. But the 
fertile valley of the Nile — "so fertile," says Herodotus, 
" that there was no need of the plough," produced not 
corn only. Barley, maize, flax, cotton, indigo, the 
papyrus, henna, with which the women tinted their 
finger nails, clover sufficient for countless herds of cattle 
and sheep, onions and radishes, supplied to the laborers 
employed in building the great pyramid of Cheops to 
the amount of eight millions of drachms, grapes, dates, 
figs, and that delicious fruit of the lotus, which, accord- 
ing to Homer, "made one forget his native land," 
were other sources of wealth. Native industry produced 
paper, furniture of wood, ivory, and metal ; weapons, 
carpets, mats, fabrics of linen, wool, and silk; cloths, 
embroidered and painted; glazed pottery, glass-ware, 
vases of bronze and alabaster, enamels, jewels of gold 
and settings of gems. Finally commerce, which had 
its factories beyond the Aromatic Cape, which sent its 
caravans across Arabia and the Lybian Desert, and 
whose countless ships ploughed the seas from the 
Pillars of Hercules to the mouth of the Indus, had 
made Alexandria the emporium of the three continents. 
/ Under Ptolemy XL, the father of Cleopatra, the taxes, 



CLEOPATRA. n 

tithes, import and export duties cast annually into the 
royal treasury twelve thousand five hundred talents — 
sixty-eight millions of francs. 

The capital of the Ptolemies, Alexandria, made 
Achilles Tatius exclaim, " We are conquered," and the 
probability is that he saw this city only after the ruin of 
many of its fine edifices. But what at all times was 
most striking to the stranger was less the number and 
magnificence of the buildings than the noble order and 
symmetrical arrangement of the city. Two great 
avenues, bordered with colonnades of marble and cross- 
ing at right angles, traverse Alexandria — the longi- 
tudinal avenue, more than thirty stadia (four thousand 
eight hundred meters) in length, and thirty-five meters 
in width, ran from east to west, beginning at the gate 
of the Necropolis and terminating at the Canopic gate. 
The transverse avenue extended for a length of seven- 
teen stadia, from the southern enclosure to the great 
port. All the other streets and avenues, alike paved 
with heavy blocks of stone and provided with side- 
walks, all crossing at right angles, met the two chief 
thoroughfares. This regularity, this noble appearance, 
and endless perspectives gave to Alexandria a character 
peculiar to itself. One felt that, unlike other cities 
which grow by degrees, by successive additions, Alex- 
andria had been created at one stroke, on a fixed plan ; 
and in truth this city had, so to speak, risen from the 
sand at the will of Alexander. It was Alexander who 
determined the position of the city ; it was Alexander 
who had given it the form of the Macedonian chlamys ; 
it was Alexander who, with his architect Dinarchus, had 



12 CLEOPATRA. 

traced this network of streets and avenues, marked out 
the dykes to be raised for the new port, and appointed 
the sites for the principal edifices. Afterwards the 
Ptolemies adorned the city; they built innumerable 
monuments, created wonderful gardens ; populous 
suburbs arose, both east and west; but as a whole 
Alexandria remained as it was conceived by Alexander. 

It was from the Paneum, an artificial elevation in 
the heart of the city thirty-five meters in height, that 
a complete panorama of Alexandria could be seen. 
On the south, thousands of houses and private 
palaces stretched away to the circumference which, 
owing to the perspective, seemed to bathe in the 
shining waters of Lake Maratis. Humble cottages, 
rough-coated with lime, pierced irregularly with little 
windows, having wooden gratings, and terraced roofs 
surrounded by ventilators, serving as sleeping-places 
in the hot summer nights, alternated with vast resi- 
dences rising amidst courts and gardens, concealing 
from the view of the outside world by lofty walls, 
turreted like ramparts, their white facades and sculp- 
tured porticos with rows of painted columns and 
cornices decorated with many colored bands. The 
grand Serapium overlooked this whole portion. This 
colossal edifice was reached by a winding staircase 
of a hundred steps; columns of syenite of the Corin- 
thian order, thirty- two meters in height, supported the 
cupola. 

Looking towards the sea the view embraced the 
northern portions, the old port and the new separated 
from each other by a gigantic mole seven stadia in extent 



CLEOPATRA. 13 

which united the island of Pharos with the city. At 
the eastern extremity of this island rose the light- 
house, an immense octagon tower of two stories, one 
hundred and eleven meters in height, and built 
wholly of white marble. Around the vast port, from 
Cape Lochias to the Heptastadium, extended a noble 
line of piers along which arose palaces and temples. 
Edifices of pure Greek style stood side by side with 
Egyptian buildings and other magnificent ones in 
which both styles of architecture had combined their 
elements, relieving the utter plainness of Semitic art 
by ornaments of the Hellenic order, alternating Corin- 
thian columns with campaniform, and uniting the 
acanthus leaf with the papyrus flower. Perspectives 
of cloisters ended in apses of marble exedrae; at the 
extremity of long avenues of sphinxes gigantic pylons 
raised their pyramidal masses, where painted on white 
screens filed on processions of figures, and the entab- 
lature of which bore the emblematic disk with the great 
wings unfolded. Here a Greek temple presented a 
pediment sculptured in Parian marble; there an 
Egyptian temple, vast, squat, mysterious, showed its 
granite mass whose quadrangular pillars bore on the 
four faces of their cubic capitals the head of the god 
Hathor. On terraces covered with beds of roses, and 
shaded by sycamores, mimosas, and palms, rose 
palaces surrounded by porticos supported by col- 
umns of lotus form, alleys of pylons, pavilions in the 
form of conic towers, open kiosks, tribunes supported 
by caryatides. In the squares, at the junction of the 
streets, before the great edifices arose sculptured heads 
2 



14 CLEOPATRA. 

of Mercury, Osirian colossi, statues of the Greek 
gods, altars, heroums, dominated at intervals by lofty 
obelisks and tall masts fixed in the ground whose many 
colored flags fluttered in the breeze. 

Among these endless monuments would first be 
noticed, at the extremity of the cape, the temple of 
Isis Lochias, and a noble royal villa ; then before the 
Closed Port of the Kings the shipyards and the ar- 
senal buildings. There began the Bruchium. Enclosed 
by lofty walls and hanging gardens the Bruchium was 
a city within the city — the City of the Ptolemies. 
Each of the Lagidae had built a palace, erected a 
temple, opened gushing fountains, planted groves of 
acacias and sycamores, created ponds where bloomed 
water-lilies, and the blue lotus flower. Strabo applied 
to the monuments of the Bruchium the line of the 
Odyssey: "One produces the other." Near the vari- 
ous palaces of the kings and their vast appurtenances 
arose the temple of Chronos, the temple of Isis Pelu- 
sia, the lesser Serapium, the temple of Poseidon 
[Neptune], the gymnasium with its porticos of a 
stadium in extent, the theater, the covered gallery, 
the library containing seven hundred thousand 
volumes. 

Finally the Soma, the immense mausoleum in 
which Alexander's body rested in a coffin of solid 
gold, afterwards replaced by one of glass. One other 
edifice of the Bruchium attracted the eye by its vast 
proportions and its epistyle crowned by a dome. It 
was the celebrated museum of Alexandria, at once a 
school, a monastery, and an academy. 



CLEOPATRA. 15 

Grammarians, poets, philosophers, and astronomers 
lived there together at the expense of the Ptolemies, 
and it was maliciously called the Cage of the Muses, — 
a splendid cage, however, in which sang Theocritus, 
Callimachus, Apollonius, and whence arose the noble 
voice of the Alexandrian philosophy. 

Beyond the temple of Poseidon the quays inflected 
in a broken line towards the southwest. There also 
edifice succeeded to edifice — the exchange, the tem- 
ple of Bendis, the temple of Arsinoe, and the immense 
Apostasia in which was gathered the merchandise of 
the whole world. Beyond the Heptastadium was the 
old port with its great shipbuilding yards, and farther 
to the west, outside the walls, the suburb of the Necro- 
polis, the funeral quarter of the embalmers. 




II. 



HLEXANDRIA was a cosmopolitan city. 
Whilst the cities of Upper Egypt and Hep- 
tanomis had preserved the national char- 
acter, in the Delta the Hellenic civilization had been 
grafted on the Egyptian, or rather they went side by 
side. The laws and decrees were written in both lan- 
guages; the priesthood, the government, the police, 
the tribunals, the whole administration belonged 
equally to both ; the army was composed of Greek and 
Gallic mercenaries, of Cilician robbers, of fugitive 
Roman slaves. In Alexandria, where for more than 
two centuries unnumbered colonies had settled, the 
native race dwelt together in the ancient Egyptian city of 
Rhakotis, but they composed at the most only one-third 
of the population. The Jews, who inhabited a distinct 
quarter where they had their ethnarch and their San- 
hedrim, were in the proportion of one to three. From the 
Pharos to the Serapium, from the gate of the Necropolis 
to the Canopic gate were seen as many foreigners as 
Egyptians. They composed a noisy and variegated 

16 



CLEOPATRA. 17 

crowd of Greeks, Jews, Syrians, Italians, Arabs, Illyr- 
ians, Persians, and Phenicians. In the streets and on 
the wharves every language was spoken, in the temples 
every god was worshiped. Into this Babel each race 
brought its own passions. The population of Alex- 
andria, which amounted to three hundred and twenty 
thousand exclusive of the slaves, was as turbulent as 
that of the other Egyptian cities was tranquil and re- 
signed, and during the reigns of the latter Lagidae the 
Alexandrian populace always seconded the revolutions 
of the palace, hoping under new sovereigns to find 
more liberty and less taxes. 

Ptolemy XI. (Auletes) died in July, 51 B. C. He / 
left four children. By his will he appointed to succeed 
him on the throne his eldest daughter Cleopatra and 
his eldest son Ptolemy, and according to the custom of 
Egyyt the brother was to marry the sister. At her 
father's death Cleopatra was sixteen and Ptolemy thir- 
teen years old. The tutor of young Ptolemy, the 
eunuch Pothinus, was an ambitious man, and, being 
complete master of the mind of his pupil, he calculated 
to rule Egypt under the new reign ; but he soon found 
that Cleopatra would permit neither him nor Ptolemy 
to govern the kingdom. Proud and headstrong, 
Cleopatra was likewise skillful, intelligent, and very 
learned ; she spoke eight or ten languages, among 
them Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and 
Syriac. How is it possible to think that this woman, so 
haughty and so gifted, would abandon her share of the 
sovereignty in favor of a child governed by a eunuch ? 
Either she would get rid of her brother, or if she con- 
2* 



18 CLEOPATRA. 

sented to live with the young king she would soon 
acquire an absolute supremacy over him. Pothinus 
realized this, and he devoted all his energies to accom- 
plish the ruin of the queen. He began by provoking 
jealousies among the ministers and the high officers of 
the crown; then, when the dissension between the 
partisans of the king and those of Cleopatra was at its 
height he aroused the people of Alexandria against 
the young queen. He accused her of desiring to reign 
alone, even should she have to call in the armed inter- 
vention of the Romans. He declared that she had 
made this plan in conjunction with the eldest son of 
the great Pompey, Cn. Pompey, who, on his way 
through Alexandria in 49, had then become her lover.. 
The riot reached even to the gates of the palace, and 
the connivance of Pothinus and the young king could 
not escape the perspicacity of Cleopatra. She quitted 
Alexandria, accompanied by a few faithful attendants. 
The fugitive, however, did not regard herself as van- 
quished ; she would not so easily renounce that crown 
which she had already worn for three years. It was 
soon known that Cleopatra had raised an army on the 
confines of Egypt and Arabia, and that she was march- 
in g on Pelusium. The young king collected his forces 
and advanced to meet her. 

The brother and sister, the husband and wife, were 
face to face with their armies in the neighborhood of 
Pelusium when the illustrious victim of Pharsalia came 
to seek an asylum in Egypt. Pompey supposed he 
might reckon on the gratitude of the children of 
Ptolemy Auletes, for it was at his instigation that 



CLEOPATRA. 19 

seven years previously Gabienus, pro-consul of Syria, 
had replaced that king on his throne. It is true that 
after the battle of Pharsalia Pompey was helpless and 
Caesar all powerful, and in assisting a fugitive from 
whom nothing more could be hoped for, the anger of 
Caesar might be provoked. Pothinus and the other min- 
isters of the young king did not hesitate ; they welcomed 
Pompey ; but it was .to murder him as soon as he set foot 
on Egyptian territory. His head, embalmed with the 
learned art of the Egyptians, was presented to Caesar 
when the latter, who was pursuing Pompey, landed at 
Alexandria. Caesar turned his eyes from the ghastly 
trophy, and warmly reproached Pothinus and Achillas 
with their crime. Doubtless the two wretches cared 
but little for his reproaches ; they considered that they 
had done Caesar a great service in ridding him of his 
most powerful adversary, and they knew enough of 
mankind to understand that, Pompey being dead, it was 
easy for Caesar to be magnanimous. 

Caesar soon learned the contentions of Ptolemy and 
Cleopatra, the flight of the latter in consequence of the 
threats of the populace, and the battle about to take 
place between the two armies assembled at Pelusium. 
It had always been the Roman policy to intermeddle 
in the private dissensions of nations. This policy of 
intervention was still more in order for Caesar with re- 
gard to Egypt, because during his first consulate Ptol- 
emy Auletes had been declared the ally of Rome, and 
in his will had conjured the Roman people to have 
his last wishes executed. Another motive, which he 
does not mention in his " Commentaries," induced 



20 CLEOPATRA. 

Caesar to intermeddle in the affairs of Egypt. With 
little expense he had made himself the creditor of the 
late king, and he had to call upon the heirs for a large 
amount. This was no less than seven millions fifty 
thousand sesterces which remained due of the thirty-three 
thousand talents which Ptolemy had promised to pay 
Caesar and Pompey if by the assistance of the Romans 
he should recover his crown. 

Pothinus, however, thought he had done enough for 
Caesar in offering him the head of Pompey. He urged 
him, therefore, to reembark and to go whither he was 
called by much more important matters than the dis- 
putes of Ptolemy and Cleopatra : to Pontus, whence 
Pharnaces was driving his lieutenant Domitius, to 
Rome where Ccelius was exciting the plebeians. To 
the claims of Caesar, he replied that the treasury was 
empty ; to his offers of arbitration between the heirs of 
Ptolemy, he objected that it was not proper for a for- 
eigner to interfere in this quarrel, that such an inter- 
ference would rouse all Egypt. In support of his words, 
he reminded him that the people of Alexandria, regard- 
ing the fasces borne before Caesar as an outrage on the 
royal dignity, were enraged at it ; that daily new riots 
arose, that every night Roman soldiers were assassinated, 
that the Alexandrian population was very numerous, and 
that the army of Caesar (numbering only three thou- 
sand two hundred legionaries and eight hundred cavalry) 
was very small. 

But his refusals, his counsels, his implied menaces 
availed nought against the will of Caesar. His prayers 
exhausted, he commands. Pothinus is ordered formally 




CLEOPATRA. 21 

to invite in his name Ptolemy and Cleopatra to disband 
their armies and to present themselves before his con- 
sular tribunal to settle their differences. The eunuch 
was forced to yield, but, as cunning as Caesar was per- 
sistent, he hoped to turn this intervention, which he at 
first dreaded, to secure the success of his designs. With 
this purpose he sent to Cleopatra Caesar's command to 
disband her troops, but without telling her she was ex- 
pected at Alexandria, and he wrote to Ptolemy to re- 
pair at once to Caesar but still to keep his soldiers under 
arms. Pothinus calculated by these means to free him- 
self from Cleopatra's army and to secure to the young 
king the favor of Caesar, since Ptolemy alone of the 
two heirs of Auletes summoned by the consul paid due 
attention to his invitation. A few days after, Ptolemy 
actually arrived in Alexandria. He offered to Caesar 
the warmest protestations of friendship, in which he 
was joined by Pothinus, Achillas, and the other minis- 
ters; he explained the disputes between himself and 
Cleopatra, laying all the blame on her. Caesar, however, 
was not so easily duped. Pothinus had supposed that 
the absence of Cleopatra would irritate Caesar against 
her, but Caesar could not believe that the young queen 
had, through contempt, declined his invitation to repair 
to Alexandria. He thought it more probable that some 
machination of Pothinus had prevented her coming. In 
order to satisfy himself of this he secretly despatched a 
messenger to Cleopatra, whom he knew to be still at 
Pelusium. 

The queen was waiting impatiently for news from 
Caesar. On the receipt of his first message, but 



22 CLEOPATRA. 

partially transmitted by Pothinus, she had hastened 
to disband her army. She already felt full confi- 
dence in the favor of the great leader who was called 
"the husband of all women," but she knew that she 
must see Caesar, or rather that Caesar must see her. 
But the days passed and the invitation to Alexandria 
did not arrive. Finally the second message reached 
her, and she learned that Caesar had already sent for 
her to go to him, but that Pothinus had taken meas- 
ures to prevent her knowing it. The thing was plain 
enough ; her enemies were not willing that she should 
have an interview with Caesar, and now that their trick 
was discovered they would employ force; no doubt 
they were on their guard and laid their plans accord- 
ingly. If Cleopatra sought to reach Alexandria by 
land she would be taken by the outposts of the 
Egyptian army encamped before Pelusium; by sea, 
her royal trireme could not escape the vessels of 
Ptolemy cruising about the entrance to the port. 
Even should she succeed in reaching Alexandria she 
would run the risk of being torn to pieces by the 
populace, incited by Pothinus. Even in the king's 
palace, where Caesar resided as the guest of Ptolemy, 
that is to say with an Egyptian guard of honor, she 
might be seized and slain by the sentinels. 

Cleopatra, abandoning the idea of entering Alex- 
andria with the trappings of a queen, bethought 
herself of a plan to do so not merely under a disguise, 
but as a bale of goods. Accompanied by a single 
devoted attendant, Apollodorus, the Sicilian, she 
embarked from near Pelusium in a decked bark 



CLEOPATRA. 23 

which, in the middle of the night, entered the port 
of Alexandria. They landed at a pier before one of 
the lesser gates of the palace. Cleopatra enveloped 
herself in a great sack of coarse cloth of many colors, 
such as were used by travelers to pack up mats and 
mattresses, and Apollodorus bound it round with a 
strap, then taking the sack upon his shoulders, en- 
tered the gate of the palace, went straight to the 
apartments of Caesar, and laid his precious burden 
at his feet. 

Aphrodite rose radiant from the sea: Cleopatra less 
pretendingly from a sack; but Caesar was none the 
less moved at the surprise and ravished with the appa- 
rition. Cleopatra, who was then nineteen, was in the 
flower of her marvelous and seductive beauty. Dion 
Cassius calls the queen of Egypt the most beautiful 
of women, but Plutarch finds one epithet insufficient 
to depict her, and expresses himself thus: " There 
was nothing so incomparable in her beauty as to 
compel admiration ; but by the charm of her physiog- 
nomy, the grace of her whole person, the fascination 
of her presence, Cleopatra left a sting in the soul." 
This is her veritable portrait. Cleopatra did not pos- 
sess supreme beauty, she possessed supreme seduc- 
tiveness. As Victor Hugo said of a celebrated 
theatrical character, " She is not pretty, she is 
worse, " which suggestive expression may well apply 
to Cleopatra. Plutarch adds, and his testimony is 
confirmed by Dion, that Cleopatra spoke in a melo- 
dious voice and with infinite sweetness. This infor- 
mation is valuable in a psychological point of view. 



24 CLEOPATRA. 

Certes, this charm of voice, divine gift so rarely be- 
stowed, this pure and winning caress, this ever new 
delight was not one of the least attractions of the 
Siren of the Nile. 

This first interview between Caesar and Cleopatra 
probably extended far into the night. It is certain 
that, with the earliest dawn, Caesar sent for Ptolemy, 
and told him he must be reconciled to his sister and 
associate her in the government. " In one night," 
says Dion Cassius, " Caesar had become the advocate 
of her of whom he had ere while thought himself the 
judge." Ptolemy was resisting the thinly disguised 
commands of the consul, when Cleopatra appearing, 
the young king, mad with rage, cast his crown at the 
feet of Caesar and rushed from the palace uttering the 
cry: "Treason ! treason ! to arms ! " The mob, excited 
by his cries, rose and marched on the palace. Caesar 
feeling himself too weak to resist (he had but a hand- 
ful of legionaries about him) ascended one of the 
terraces and harangued the multitude from a distance. 
He succeeded in restoring a calm by his promises of 
satisfying the Egyptians in their demands. Just at 
this time his legionaries arrived from the camp, sur- 
rounded the young prince, separated him from his 
partisans, and with every mark of respect reinstated 
him willy-nilly in the palace where he might serve 
as a hostage for Caesar. The next day the people 
were assembled in the public square, and Caesar, 
accompanied by Ptolemy and Cleopatra, went thither 
in great state with his escort of lictors. Every Roman 
was under arms, ready to suppress the first symptom of 



CLEOPATRA. 25 

sedition. Caesar read aloud the testament of Ptolemy 
Auletes, and declared solemnly in the name of the 
Roman people that he would insist on carrying out 
the last will of the late king. By this the two elder 
of his children were to reign conjointly over Egypt. 
As for the other two children of the king, he, Caesar, 
made them a gift of the island of Cyprus, and handed 
over to them the sovereignty of it. 

This scene overawed the Egyptians; nevertheless, 
Caesar, fearing an insurrection, hastened to summon to 
Alexandria the new legions which he had formed in 
Asia Minor of the wrecks of Pompey's army. But long 
before these reinforcements could reach him, the 
Egyptian army from Pelusium, on secret orders from 
Pothinus, entered the city to drive out the Romans. At 
the same time, Arsinoe, the young sister of Cleopatra, 
assisted by the eunuch Ganymede, made her escape from 
the palace, and in default of Ptolemy, still Caesar's pris- 
oner, was received with acclamations both by the army 
and people as the daughter of the Lagidae. This 
army, commanded by Achillas, amounted to eighteen 
thousand foot and two thousand horse, and the people 
of Alexandria made with it common cause against the 
foreigner. 

Caesar had but four thousand soldiers and the crews of 
his triremes. He was in extreme peril ; occupying with 
this handful of men the palaces of the Bruchium, he 
was attacked from the city by the troops of Achillas 
and the armed populace, and his fleet, which was at 
anchor in the greater harbor, was virtually captive, 
since the enemy held the passes of Taurus and Hep- 
3 



26 CLEOPATRA. 

tastadium. He even feared that this inactive fleet 
might fall into the hands of the Alexandrians, who 
would have made use of it to intercept his supplies 
of men and munitions. Caesar averted this danger by 
setting fire to his vessels. The immense conflagration 
reached the quays and destroyed many houses and 
edifices, among others the arsenal, the library, and 
the grain emporium. The Egyptians, exasperated,, 
rushed to the attack, but the legionaries, as good 
diggers as brave soldiers, had transformed the Bru- 
chium into an impregnable entrenched camp. On 
all sides were embankments, barricades, lines of 
earthworks ; the theater had become a citadel. The 
Romans sustained twenty assaults without losing an 
inch of ground. Caesar even succeeded in seizing 
the island of Pharos, which gave him the command 
of the great harbor. 

The Egyptians imagined that victory would be 
theirs if, instead of a woman, they could have Ptolemy 
to lead them. They therefore sent word to Caesar 
that they made war on him only because he kept 
their king a prisoner, and that as soon as he should 
be restored to liberty hostilities would cease. Caesar, 
who knew the fickleness of the Alexandrians, yielded 
— he gave them back Ptolemy. As for his accustomed 
counsellor Pothinus, Caesar had intercepted letters from 
him to Achillas, and had delivered him over to the 
lictors. No sooner had Ptolemy rejoined the Egyp- 
tian army than the war, far from ceasing, was renewed 
with increased vigor. Just then the first reinforce- 
ment, the thirty-seventh legion, reached Caesar by 



CLEOPATRA. 27 

sea. The war was carried on without any decided ad- 
vantage till the beginning of the spring of 47 B. C. 
Then it was learned that Pelusium had been taken 
by assault by an army that was coming to the relief 
of Caesar; it was a body of auxiliaries from Syria, 
led by Mithridates of Pergamos. The Egyptians, 
fearing to be shut in between two enemies if they 
remained in Alexandria to await the coming of Mith- 
ridates, marched to meet him. The first battle, which 
was indecisive, took place near Memphis ; but, a few 
days later, Caesar, who had also quitted Alexandria, 
.succeeded in joining the troops of Mithridates and a 
second battle was fought. The Egyptians were broken 
and cut to pieces, and King Ptolemy drowned himself 
in the Nile. Caesar returned with his victorious army 
to Alexandria, now humbled ; the turbulent populace 
of the great city, henceforth, knowing the power of the 
Roman steel, received the consul with loud acclaims. 
Thus ended the War of Alexandria, which should rather 
be styled the War of Cleopatra, since this war, adding \ 
nothing to Caesar's fame, injurious to his interests, use- 
less to his country, and to which he nearly sacrificed 
both his life and his glory, had been maintained by 
him for the love of Cleopatra. 




III. 



^r^NY* IGHTEEN years previous to these events, 
^P"— 1 Caesar, being aedile, had endeavored to have 

^^^^^ voted by a plebiscit the execution of the 
will of Alexander II., who had bequeathed Egypt to 
the Roman people. Now, Egypt was subjugated and 
Caesar had but to say the word for this vast and rich 
country to become a Roman province. But in the year 
63 Cleopatra was only just born ; in the year 65 Caesar 
had not felt the bite of the " Serpent of the Nile," as 
Shakspeare calls her — the consul took good care not 
to remember the propositions of the aedile. The first 
act of Caesar on reentering Alexandria was solemnly to 
recognize Cleopatra as Queen of Egypt. In order, 
however, to humor the ideas of the Egyptians he de- 
termined that she should espouse her second brother, 
Ptolemy Neoteras, and share the sovereignty with him. 
As, however, Dion remarks, this union and this sharing 
were equally visionary ; the young prince, who was 
only fifteen, could be neither king nor even husband to 
the queen ; apparently Cleopatra was the wife of her 

28 



CLEOPATRA. 29 

brother, and his partner on the throne ; in reality she 
reigned solely, and continued the mistress of Caesar. 

During the eight months of the Alexandrian struggle 
Caesar, shut up in the palace, had scarcely quitted 
Cleopatra, except for the fight, and this long honey- 
moon had seemed short to him. He loved the beautiful 
queen as fondly, and perhaps more so, than in the 
early days, and he could not resolve to leave her. In 
vain the gravest interests called him to Rome, where 
disorder reigned and blood was flowing, and where, 
since the December of the preceding year, not a letter 
had been received from him; 1 in vain, in Asia, Phar- 
naces, the conquerer of the royal allies of Rome and of 
the legions of Domitius, has seized on Pontus, Cap- 
padocia, and Armenia; in vain, in Africa, Cato and 
the last adherents of Pompey have concentrated at 
Utica an immense army — fourteen legions, ten thou- 
sand Numidian horsemen, and one hundred and twenty 
elephants of war; in vain, in Spain, all minds are ex- 
cited and revolt is brewing. Duty, interest, ambition, 
danger — Caesar forgets everything in the arms of 
Cleopatra. Truly he is preparing to leave Alexandria, 
but it is to accompany the beautiful queen on a pleasure 
excursion up the Nile. By the orders of Cleopatra, one 
of those immense flat-bottomed pleasure vessels has 
been prepared, such as were used by the Lagidae for 

1 Cicero to Atticus. — In this letter, dated from Brundusium, 
June 14, 706 A. u. C, Cicero speaks of the long sojourn of 
Caesar at Alexandria. There is thought to be much trouble there, 
" valde esse impedimentum." This " impedimentum," of which 
Caesar makes no complaint, was Cleopatra. 

3* 



30 CLEOPATRA. 

sailing on the river, and called thalamegos (pleasure 
pinnace). It was a veritable floating palace, half a 
stadium long and forty cubits high above the water-line. 
The stories rose one above the other, surrounded by 
porticos and open galleries, and surmounted by bel- 
vederes sheltered from the sun by purple awnings. 
Within were numerous apartments, furnished with 
every convenience and every luxurious refinement of 
Greco-Egyptian civilization, vast saloons surrounded by 
colonnades, a banqueting-hall provided with thirteen 
couches, with a ceiling arched like a grotto, and spark- 
ling with a rock-work of jasper, lapis lazuli, cornelian, ala- 
baster, amethyst, aquamarine, and topaz. The vessel 
was built of cedar and cypress, the sails were of byssus r 
the ropes were dyed purple. Throughout, carved by 
skillful hands, were the opening chalices of the lotus, 
wound the volutes of the acanthus, twined garlands of 
bean-leaves and flowers of the date palm. On all sides 
shone facings of marble, of thyia, ivory, onyx, capitals 
and architraves of bronze. Mimes, acrobats, troops of 
dancing-girls, and flutists were on board to cheer the 
austere solitude of the Thebaid with the diversions and 
luxuries of Alexandria. 

Caesar and Cleopatra anticipate with rapture this 
voyage of enchantments ; they will carry their young 
loves amid the old cities of Egypt, along the " Golden 
Nile," which they will ascend as far as the mysterious 
land of Ethiopia. But on the very eve of their de- 
parture the legionaries become indignant, they murmur, 
they rebel ; their officers cry aloud to the consul, and 
Caesar returns to reason. For an instant he contem- 



CLEOPATRA. 31 

plates carrying Cleopatra away with him to Rome, but 
that project must be deferred. It is in Armenia that 
the danger is most pressing; it is to Armenia that he 
will first repair. He leaves two legions with Cleopatra 
— a faithful and formidable guard, which will secure 
the tranquility of Alexandria, and sets sail for Antioch. 

During the campaigns of Caesar in Armenia and 
Africa (from July, 47, to June, 46, B. C.) Cleopatra re- 
mained in Alexandria, where a few months after the 
departure of the dictator she gave birth to a son. She 
named him Ptolemy-Caesarion, thus proclaiming her 
intimate relations with Caesar, which, however, were 
no secret to the Alexandrians. 

When Caesar, the army of Cato under Thapsus being 
crushed, was about to return to Rome, he wrote to Cle- 
opatra to meet him there. Probably she arrived there 
about midsummer of the year 46, at the period of the 
celebration of Caesar's four triumphs. In the second, 
the triumph of Egypt, Cleopatra must have beheld, at 
the head of the train of captives, her sister Arsinoe, who 
at the breaking out of the war of Alexandria had joined 
her enemies. The queen had brought with her her son 
Caesarion, her pseudo-husband the young Ptolemy, and 
a numerous train of courtiers and officers. Caesar gave 
up his superb villa on the right bank of the Tiber as a 
residence for Cleopatra and her court. 

Officially, if we may thus use this very new word to 
express a very old thing, Cleopatra was well received in 
Rome. She was the queen of a great country, the ally 
of the Republic, and she was the guest of Caesar, then 
all-powerful ; but, beneath the homage offered, lurked 



32 



CLEOPATRA. 



< 



contempt and hatred. Not that Roman society took 
offence at her intrigue with Caesar; for more than half 
a century, republican Rome had strangely changed its 
chaste morals and severe principles. Public morality, 
private morality, — were utterly transformed. Electors 
sold their votes, and the elected made use of their offi- 
ces to re-imburse themselves for their election expenses 
and to provide means for their reelection ; they sold alli- 
ances, prevaricated, plundered, took ransoms, having an 
understanding with the publicans (tax-gatherers) to 
grind down the provinces. In the latter times of the 
Republic in Rome politics became the school of crime ; 
the theater, where, contrary to the custom of the 
Greeks, women might take part in the comedies and 
in the obscene games of the mimes and mountebanks, 
became the school of debauchery. The favorite poet 
is the licentious Catullus; the mold of fashion, and at 
the same time the pupil, client, and friend of Cicero is 
Ccelius, a man of unscrupulous ambition and unbridled 
libertinism. Assassination became a means of govern- 
ment, poison a way to an inheritance. From the time 
of the proscriptions of Sylla, the hold on life seemed 
very precarious ; one must make the most of it. " Let us 
live and love," says Catullus. " Suns may set and rise 
again, but we, when our brief day is ended, must sleep 
a night that has no morrow." The time was past when 
the Roman matron lived quietly at home and spun 
with her maidens. She sought adventures, plotted, 
gave or sold herself. Greek libertinism and Oriental 
voluptuousness had reached Rome and been transformed 
into a gross sensuality. The multiplicity of divorces 



CLEOPATRA. 33 

"annihilated the sacredness of the family"; the love 
of luxury, ambition, and extravagant passions ruined its 
honor, and the noblest of the patrician ladies were the 
foremost in this race of debauchery. Among them 
were Valeria, the sister of Hortensius ; Sempronia, wife 
of Junius Brutus ; Claudia, wife of Lucullus, and the 
other Claudia, wife of Quintus Metellus Celer. Again 
there was Junia, the wife of Lepidus; Posthumia, the 
wife of Sulpicius; Lollia, the wife of Gabinius; Tertullia, 
the wife of Crassus ; Mucia, the wife of the great Pom- 
pey ; Servilia, the mother of Brutus, and many others. 
In so dissolute and adulterous a city, it could shock 
no one that Caesar should be false to his wife with one 
mistress or even with several; but in the midst of her 
debaucheries, and even though Rome had lost many of 
her ancient virtues, she still preserved the pride of the 
Roman name. These conquerors of the world looked 
upon other nations as of servile race and inferior human- 
ity. Little did they care for the transient loves of 
Caesar and Ennoah, queen of Mauritania, nor would 
they have cared any more had Cleopatra served merely 
to beguile his leisure during the war of Alexandria ; but 
in bringing this woman to the seven-hilled city, in 
publicly acknowledging her as his mistress, in forcing 
on all the spectacle of a Roman citizen, five times con- 
sul and thrice dictator, as the lover of an Egyptian 
woman, Caesar seemed, according to the ideas of the 
time, to insult all Rome. As Merivale justly observes: 
"If one can imagine the effect that would have been 
produced in the fifteenth century by the marriage of a 
peer of England or of a grandee of Spain with a Jewess 



34 



CLEOPATRA. 



some idea may be formed of the impression made on 
the Roman people by the intrigue of Caesar and Cleo- 
patra." 

Caesar had received supreme power and had been dei- 
fied. He was created dictator for ten years, and in the 
city his statue bore this inscription: "Caesari semi- 
deo" — To Caesar the demigod. He might believe 
himself sufficiently powerful to despise Roman preju- 
dices ; for the rest, during the last two years of his life, 
Caesar, till then so prudent, so cautious in humoring the 
sentiments of the plebeians, so skillful in using them for 
his own designs, pretended in his public life to despise 
and brave public opinion. It was the same in his private 
life; far from dismissing Cleopatra, he visited her more 
frequently than ever at the villa on the Tiber, talked 
incessantly of the queen, and allowed her publicly to 
call her son Caesarion. 

He went further still; he erected in the temple of 
Venus the golden statue of Cleopatra, thus adding to 
the insult to the Roman people the outrage to the 
Roman gods. It was not enough that Caesar for love 
of Cleopatra had not reduced Egypt to a Roman pro- 
vince ; not enough that he had installed this foreigner 
in Rome, in his villa on the banks of the Tiber, and 
that he lavished on her every mark of honor and every 
testimony of love ; — now he dedicated, in the temple of 
a national divinity, the statue of this prostitute of Alex- 
andria, this barbarous queen of the land of magicians, 
of thaumaturgy [wonder-working], of eunuchs, of ser- 
vile dwellers by the Nile, these worshipers of stuffed 
birds and gods with the heads of beasts. Men asked 



CLEOPATRA, 35 

each other where the infatuation of Caesar would end. 
It was reported that the dictator was preparing to pro- 
pose, by the tribune Helvius China, a law which would 
permit him to espouse as many wives as he desired in 
order to beget children by them. It was said that he 
was about to recognize the son of Cleopatra as his heir, 
and still further, that after having exhausted Italy in 
levies of men and money he would leave the govern- 
ment of Rome in the hands of his creatures and transfer 
the seat of empire to Alexandria. These rumors 
aroused all minds against Caesar, and, if we may credit / 
Dion, tended to arm his assassins against him (to 
furnish the dagger to slay him). 1 Notwithstanding this 
hostility, Cleopatra was not deserted in the villa on the 
Tiber. To please the divine Julius, to approach him \ 
more intimately, the Caesarians controlled their antip- 
athy and frequently visited the beautiful queen. To 
this court of Egypt transported to the banks of the 
Tiber came Mark Antony, Dolabella, Lepidus, then 
general-of-horse ; Oppius Curio, Cornelius Balbus, 
Helvius Cinna, Matius, the praetor Vendidius, Trebo- 
nius, and others. Side by side with the partisans of 
Caesar were also some of his secret enemies, such as 
Atticus, a celebrated silver merchant with great inter- 
ests in Egypt, and others whom he had won over, like 
Cicero. The latter while making his peace with Caesar 
did not forget his master-passion, love of books and of 
curiosities. An insatiable collector, he thought to en- 
rich his library at Tusculum without loosing his purse- 

1 If this were true, Cleopatra would have been as fatal to Caesar 
as she afterwards became to Antony. 



36 CLEOPATRA. 

strings, and requested Cleopatra to send for him to 
Alexandria, where such treasures abounded, for a few 
Greek, manuscripts and Egyptian antiquities. The 
queen promised willingly, and one of her officers, 
Aumonius, who, formerly an ambassador of Ptolemy 
Auletes to Rome, had there known Cicero, undertook 
the commission; but whether through forgetfulness or 
negligence the promised gifts came not, and Cicero 
preserved so deep an enmity to the queen in conse- 
quence that he afterwards wrote to Atticus, "I hate the 
queen (odi reginam)," giving as his only reason for this 
aversion the failure of the royal promise. The former 
consul had also received an affront from Sarapion, one 
of Cleopatra's officers. This man had gone to his 
house, and when Cicero asked him what he wished he 
had replied rudely: " I seek Atticus," and at once de- 
parted. How often does the ill-conduct of upper ser- 
vants create a prejudice against the great. 

The assassination of Csesar, which struck Cleopatra 
like a thunderbolt, would have been the destruction of all 
her hopes if one could lose hope at twenty- five. Caesar 
dead, there was nothing to detain her in Rome, and she 
did not feel safe in this hostile city amid the bloody 
scenes of the parricidal days. She prepared to depart, 
but Antony having entertained for a moment the weak 
desire of opposing to Octavius as Caesar's heir the little 
Caesarion, Cleopatra remained in Rome until the middle 
of April. When the queen perceived that this project 
was fin ally abandoned, she hastened to depart from the 
city where she had experienced so much contempt and 
which she quitted with rage in her heart. 





«ww 



IV. 



CLEOPATRA reentered Alexandria without 
opposition, but the civil war which threat- 
ened between the adherents of Caesar and 
the republicans made her situation difficult and her 
crown precarious. The ally of the Roman people, 
she could not remain neutral in the struggle ; but at 
the risk of the victors', whoever they might be, making 
her pay the penalty of her desertion by annexing Egypt 
to the empire, she inclined to the Triumvirs; for the 
partisans of Caesar had been less inimical to her while 
in Rome, and Antony, through policy indeed, rather 
than friendship, had spoken in favor of her son's suc- 
cession. On the other hand, if the Triumvirs pos- 
sessed the West, their adversaries were almost the 
masters of the East, and directly threatened Egypt. 
At the very commencement of hostilities Cassius, who 
with eight legions occupied Syria, called upon Cleo- 
patra to send him reinforcements, and almost at the 
same time one of the lieutenants of Antony, Dolabella, 
besieged in Laodicea, addressed the same demand to her. 

4 37 



38 CLEOPATRA. 

Cassius was seemingly victorious, Dolabella the re- 
verse ; prudence would have advised to side with the 
former, nevertheless Cleopatra remained faithful to her 
tacit alliance with the Csesarians. Four Roman legions, 
two left by Caesar and two composed of the veterans of 
Gabinius, were stationed at Alexandria. The queen 
commanded them to set out for Laodicea, but the envoy 
of Dolabella, Allienus, who had taken the command of 
these troops, came upon the army of Cassius in Syria. 
Whether from pusillanimity or premeditated treachery, 
Allienus united his legions with those of the enemy 
against whom he was leading them, and only a single 
Egyptian squadron, which Cleopatra had also des- 
patched to Laodicea, reached Antony. 

Soon after the departure of the legions, 43 B. C, the 
young king Ptolemy died suddenly. Cleopatra was 
accused of having him poisoned. This crime, which 
is far from being authenticated, is by no means im- 
probable. It may be that when Cleopatra by the 
departure of the Roman soldiers found herself without 
any reliable troops, she dreaded either a conspiracy in 
the palace or an insurrection which would drive her 
from the throne to place on it her brother. Six years 
previously the same circumstance had resulted to the 
advantage of her other brother, and Cleopatra had 
nearly fallen a victim. Immediately on the death of 
Ptolemy XIII., the queen took as the sharer of the 
throne her young son Ptolemy-Caesarion, then four 
years of age. 

Stationed at Cyprus was an Egytian fleet. Cassius 
sent orders direct to the navarch Sarapion, who com- 



CLEOPATRA. 39 

manded it, to unite with the republican fleet, and the 
latter obeyed without even referring to his sovereign. 
Not satisfied with the four legions and the squadron 
which he had already received from Cleopatra, much 
against her will, indeed, Cassius again sent her word 
to furnish him new supplies of troops, ships, provisions, 
and money. The queen, who feared an invasion, which 
she was without forces to repel, sought to temporize. 
She expressed her regrets to Cassius that she could not 
at once send him aid, Egypt being ruined by famine 
and pestilence. Famine indeed reigned there by reason 
of an insufficient inundation of the Nile, but Egypt was 
not ruined for all that, and whilst Cleopatra was evading 
the demands of Cassius she was preparing a new fleet 
to assist the Triumvirs. Cassius was not deceived by 
the diplomacy of Cleopatra's envoy. He determined 
to invade Egypt. He had already set out on his march 
when Brutus, on the approach of the army of Antony, 
summoned him into Macedonia. Then Cleopatra sent 
her fleet to join the party of the Caesarians, but on the 
way this fleet was dispersed and almost utterly destroyed 
by a tempest. Throughout this war ill-fortune seemed 
to pursue Cleopatra — with the best will to second the 
Triumvirs she had been able to give them almost no 
assistance ; on the contrary, she had furnished rein- 
forcements to the republicans, who, well knowing that 
these reinforcements had been most unwillingly sup- 
plied, desired to take vengeance for her reluctance. 

The battle of Philippi freed Cleopatra from her 
anxiety on the score of the republicans ; but she had 
still to fear the penalty of her apparent desertion of 



40 CLEOPATRA. 

the Triumvirs. After his victory over Brutus, Antony 
overran Greece and Asia Minor for the purpose of levy- 
ing tribute, and was everywhere received as a conqueror. 
Cities and kings vied with each other in adulation, 
heaped up honors and lavished gifts on him to secure 
immunity for the succor they had afforded, willingly or 
by force, to the vanquished party. At Athens, Megara, 
Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tarsus embassies and royal 
visits followed each other. To preserve to their king- 
doms a quasi-autonomy, every petty sovereign of Asia 
hastened to obtain from the powerful triumvir a new 
investiture of his crown. Cleopatra alone, whether 
from queenly pride or womanly art, remained in 
Egypt and sent no ambassador ; she seemed to pre- 
tend to ignore that the victory at Philippi had ren- 
dered Antony the master of the East. 

The silence of Cleopatra surprised and irritated 
Antony. Perhaps wounded pride was not the only 
sentiment in the soul of the triumvir. When he was 
commanding the cavalry of Gabinius he had seen 
Cleopatra, then fifteen years old; he had seen her 
again at Rome, the year of Caesar's death. Without 
agreeing wholly with Appian, that Antony was al- 
ready in love with the queen of Egypt, it may be 
credited that her beauty and her attractions had 
made on him a deep impression. He remembered 
the "Siren of the Nile," and amid the visits of so 
many kings and powers it was, above all, hers that 
he awaited, but awaited in vain. In the position of 
Antony, however, to speak was to be obeyed. He 
commanded Cleopatra to repair to Tarsus, to vindi- 



CLEOPATRA. 



41 



cate before his tribunal her ambiguous conduct during 
the civil war. Antony enjoyed in advance this deli- 
ciously cruel pleasure : the beautiful Cleopatra, the 
haughty queen of Egypt, the woman at whose feet 
he had seen the divine Julius, coming to him as a 
suppliant. 

Quintus Dellius, a creature of Antony's, was ap- 
pointed to bear the message to Cleopatra. This 
Dellius, an unscrupulous intriguer and agreeable 
man of pleasure, had by turns betrayed all men and 
all parties. He was called " The Hunter of the 
Civil Wars " — Desultor belloru?n civilium. He was 
destined to die the friend of Horace, who dedicated 
an ode to him, and the friend of Augustus who en- 
riched him. In the meanwhile he was going to 
make use of Cleopatra to enable him to attain still 
higher favor with Antony. At the first audience 
granted him by the beautiful queen, he understood 
the passion of Csesar and foresaw that of Antony. 
Feeling that Cleopatra would captivate the triumvir 
at the first glance, he saw at once the advantage to 
be gained in the near future from the patronage of 
the Egyptian queen; and from the envoy of Antony 
he suddenly became the courtier of Cleopatra, and 
from an ambassador an intermeddler. He exhorted 
the queen to hasten into Cilicia, assuring her that, 
despite his appearance and manners suitable to the 
amphitheater, the rough soldier of Pharsalia and 
Philippi was not so ferocious as he seemed. " Never," 
said he, "will Antony call tears to eyes so beautiful, 
and far from causing you the least pain he will fulfil 
4* 



42 CLEOPATRA. 

your every wish." Dellius found no difficulty in per- 
suading Cleopatra: she saw, shining through his words, 
the dawn of a new fortune equal to that which she had 
dreamed of as the mistress of Caesar. According 
to a somewhat doubtful tradition, Dellius might have 
succeeded in more than securing the attention of 
Cleopatra : he might have made himself beloved hj 
her. Be this as it may, the queen, yielding to his 
counsels, determined to set out for Tarsus, but in 
order to enhance the value of the proceeding and to 
make it more effective she was careful not to precip- 
itate it, and under various pretexts she often delayed 
her departure, notwithstanding the entreaties of Del- 
lius and the messages constantly increasing in earnest- 
ness despatched by Antony. 

On a day when the triumvir on his judgment-seat 
was giving public audience in the midst of the agora 
of Tarsus, a great uproar arose on the banks of the 
Cydnus. Antony inquired what it meant. Flatterers 
as all Greeks are, the Cilicians replied that it was 
Aphrodite herself who, for the happiness of Asia r 
was coming to visit Bacchus. Antony liked to 
assume the name of Bacchus. The crowd which 
thronged the public square rushed in a body to the 
shore. Antony was left alone with his lictors in 
the deserted agora — his dignity kept him there, 
but he fidgets in his curule chair, till finally curiosity 
gains the day. Unaccustomed to self-control, he r 
also, descends to the strand. The sight is worth 
the trouble — a vision divine which carries one back 
to the dawn of mythologic times. Cleopatra is en- 



CLEOPATRA. 43 

tering Tarsus, ascending the Cydnus on a vessel 
plated with gold over which float sails of Tyrian 
purple. The silver oars rise and fall in measured 
cadence to the music of Greek lyres and Egyptian 
harps. The queen, the goddess Cleopatra, lying 
beneath an awning of cloth of gold which shades 
the deck, appears as the painters usually represent 
Aphrodite, surrounded by rosy children like the 
Loves, beautiful young girls scarcely clad with light- 
est drapery as Graces and sea-nymphs, bearing gar- 
lands of roses and the lotus-flower and waving great 
fans of the feathers of the ibis. On the prow of the 
vessel other Nereides form groups worthy the brush 
of Apelles; Loves suspended to the yards' and rigging 
seem descending from the skies. Incense and spike- 
nard kept burning by slaves surround the vessel with 
a light and odorous vapor which sends its perfume to 
both banks of the stream. 

Antony at once despatched one of his favorites to 
Cleopatra to request her to sup with him that same 
night. Cleopatra, availing herself doubtless of her title 
of goddess rather than of that of queen — a queen of 
Egypt was nobody in comparison with a triumvir — made 
response that it was she who invited Antony to supper, 
and the Roman did not decline the invitation. He went 
at the hour appointed to the palace, which several days 
previously Cleopatra had had secretly prepared with 
gorgeous magnificence. The banquet-hall, sumptuously 
adorned, shone with the brilliancy of chandeliers, cande- 
labra, and a multitude of golden sconces arranged sym- 
metrically in circles, lozenges, etc. The feast, worthy 



44 CLEOPATRA. 

of its decorations, abounded in nectarean wines served 
in vases of solid gold, and in rare and artistic viands 
prepared by a master hand. Antony was a great 
gastronomist, and three months before this had given 
his cook a house for a dish that pleased him. He would 
have given a whole town to the cook of Cleopatra. As 
for the beautiful Egyptian, the triumvir was already 
willing to give her the whole world. The next day 
Antony gave a supper to the queen. He hoped to 
surpass, by means of money, the magnificence of his 
reception, but he was the first to recognize his inability 
to rival her as an Amphitryon, and, clever man that he 
was, 1 he jested gaily in Cleopatra's presence at his 
meanness and coarse taste. Probably in these two en- 
tertainments there was no mention of the grievances, 
real or pretended, with which Rome charged Cleopatra. 
Antony had no longer any thought of summoning 
her before his tribunal as a suppliant — the suppliant 
would have been Antony himself if Cleopatra had re- 
jected his advances. Henceforth it was the queen that 
commanded ; the all-powerful triumvir had become the 
"slave of the Egyptian woman," as Dion Cassius in- 
dignantly exclaims. , 

The first advantage Cleopatra took of her power was 
to have her son, by Caesar, Ptolemy-Caesarion, recog- 

1 We must not judge Antony wholly by the passionate at- 
tacks of Cicero. Plutarch quotes a number of clever retorts of 
this brave and excellent soldier; and, in another order of ideas, 
his letter to Octavius and Hirtius, from which we find long ex- 
tracts in the " Third Philippic," is the work of a skillful politician 
as well as a model of wit. 



/ 



CLEOPATRA. 45 

nized as legitimate heir to the crown of Egypt. At 
Antony's request the decree was immediately ratified 
by his colleagues, Octavius an d Lepidus. Antony 
alleged as a pretext for this favor to Cleopatra, the ser- 
vices she rendered to the Romans during the civil war. 
After having satisfied her ambition, Antony became 
without difficulty the executor of her revenge. Like 
most women the beautiful queen was vindictive, and 
like Dionysius the Tyrant, she carried her prudence to 
the extent of crime. Her sister Arsinoe had escaped 
from Rome, where she had contributed to Caesar's tri- 
umph ; she had found an asylum at Miletus. Whether 
Cleopatra feared that, ambitious and intriguing as she 
had already shown herself in the War of Alexandria, 
she might again create trouble in Egypt, or simply to 
avenge herself for Arsinoe's former conduct, the queen 
besought Antony to have her put to death. One crime 
more or less weighed but little on the conscience of the ~ 
proscriber of the year 711 A. U. C. The unfortunate 
Arsinoe was murdered in the temple of Artemis Leu- 
cophryne, where she had sought refuge from the hired 
assassins of Antony. An Egyptian, also a refugee in 
Asia Minor where he passed himself off as Ptolemy 
XII. , drowned as was well-known in the Nile, was also 
put to death. Cleopatra bore an ill-will, the cause of 
which is not known, also to Megabyses, of the great 
temple of Ephesus. He was arrested by Antony's 
order, and his life was saved only by the interference 
of the magistrates of the city, speaking in the name of 
the people, who rose in insurrection to rescue him. At 
the same time, Sarapion, the former commander of 



46 CLEOPATRA. 

the Egyptian squadron at Cyprus, was beheaded by the 
order of Antony, thus avenging Cleopatra for the 
defection of her officer and Antony for the aid given 
to Cassius. When Cleopatra arrived at Tarsus in the 
summer of 41 B. C., Antony was preparing to march 
against the Parthians. At the end of a month the 
concentration of his troops was accomplished, the fleets 
ready, and no obstacle remained to the departure of 
the army. But this month had been passed with Cleo- 
patra, and Antony had found it very short. Listening 
only to his passion, he put off the expedition till the 
spring and followed the queen into Egypt. 

Then began that mad life of pleasure and debauch- 
ery, that long and sumptuous orgy, which even in the 
third century of our era, and after the excesses of Nero 
and Heliogabalus, was still quoted in the Roman world, 
though then slaves to every corruption and exhausted 
in efforts of magnificence, as an inimitable model. 

Ot Aiu/AYjToJtot : " Those whose life is inimitable." 
This, moreover, was the name assumed by Antony and 
Cleopatra and the intimate companions of their pleas- 
ures. 1 Plutarch and Dion relate that festival succeeded 
to festival, entertainment to entertainment, and hunting 
parties to excursions on the Nile. Cleopatra quitted 
Antony neither day nor night. She drank with him, 
she gambled with him, hunted with him, she was even 
present at his military exercises when by chance this 
man of war, remembering that he was a soldier, took a 
fancy to review his legions. It is further related that 

lA curious inscription, discovered in Alexandria by M. C. 
Vescher, is as follows : "Antony the Great, the Inimitable." 



CLEOPATRA. 47 

Cleopatra was incessantly inventing some new diver- 
sion, some unexpected pleasure. But this list is very 
brief, this sketch a very modest and faint description 
to give an idea of the superb orgies, the unrestrained 
voluptuousness, and the nameless prodigalities of the 
" Inimitables." Pliny alone of the ancient writers has 
summed them up, perhaps unknown to himself, in the 
legend, more or less symbolic, of the Pearl. One day, 
says this writer, when Antony was extolling the lux- 
uriousness and profusion of a certain entertainment, he 
exclaimed that no other could surpass it. Cleopatra, who 
always affected to put no limit to the possible, replied 
that the present feast was a wretched affair, and she 
laid a wager that the next day she would give one on 
which she would expend ten millions of sesterces (two 
millions one hundred thousand francs). Antony took 
the bet. The next day the feast, magnificent as it was, 
had nothing to distinguish it from the preceding, and 
Antony did not fail to rally Cleopatra. " Per Bacchus," 
cried he, ' ( this would never cost ten millions of sesterces I" 
"I know that," replied the queen, " but you see only 
the accessories. I myself will drink alone the ten mill- 
ions," and at once detaching from her ear a single 
pearl — the largest and most perfect ever seen — she 
threw it into a golden cup, in which it was dissolved 
in the vinegar there prepared, and swallowed at one 
draught the acid beverage. She was about to sacrifice 
the second pearl when L. Plancus, the umpire of the 
wager, arrested her hand by declaring that she had won. 1 

1 Pliny, IX. 35. The legend is not so much of a myth as it 
appears. Pliny relates that Octavius, having found the second 



48 CLEOPATRA. 

Picture to yourself the most costly materials, marbles, 
breccia, granites, ebony and cedar woods, porphyry, 
basalt, agate, onyx, lapis-lazuli, bronze, silver, ivory, 
and gold ; conceive the most imposing Egyptian, the 
most beautiful Grecian architecture, imagine the Par- 
thenon and the temple of Jupiter Olympus, the Pavilion 
of Rameses, and the ruins of Apollinopolis Magna ; 
recreate the royal palaces of Alexandria, which, with 
their dependencies, their gardens, their terraces, rising 
one above another, made up a third of the city : 
reconstruct the massive enclosures — those double 
pylons into which opened avenues bordered with 
sphinxes ; those obelisks, those magnificent propylaea, 
those saloons three hundred feet long and a hundred 
and fifty wide, supported by vast columns, in which 
rise double rows of pillars ten meters in circumference 
and twenty meters in height, bursting into lotus blos- 
soms at their summits ; those sanctuaries with their 
screens enameled in gold and tortoiseshell, and studded 
with gems; those long picture galleries adorned with 
the paintings of Zeuxis, Apelles, and Protogenes ; 
those magnificent thermae with their calidaria, their 
basins of hot and cold water, their retiring-rooms 
with walls of red porphyry, their porticos adorned 
with statues ; those gymnasia, theaters, hippo- 
dromes, those stages covered with saffron powder, 
those triclinia where the couches of embossed silver 
rested on Babylonian carpets; those atria with their 
uncovered roofs, sustained by Corinthian columns with 

pearl in the treasury of Cleopatra, had it cut in two, and with it 
adorned the ears of the Pantheon Venus. 



CLEOPATRA. 49 

capitals of golden bronze, by day shaded by purple 
awnings, the silk of which was worth its weight in gold, 
and at night open to the starry sky. See, at all seasons, 
blooming in the gardens roses and violets, and scatter 
the pavements of onyx and mosaics four times a day 
with fresh flowers ; people this scenery with crowds of 
slaves, pipers, players of the harp and psaltery, dancers, 
actors, Atellans [of the drama, as at Atellan, of las- 
civious character, Atellanae], acrobats, mimes, gym- 
nasts, ballet-dancers, and serpent-charmers. Load 
these tables with oysters from Tarentum, lampreys 
dressed with garum, bonitos cooked in fig-leaves, pink 
ousels, quails, pheasants, swans, geese livers, stews 
made of the brains of birds, hares cooked rare and 
dusted with coriander seeds, truffles as large as the 
fist which were assumed to fall from the sky like 
aerolites, cakes of honey and wheat flour, and the most 
delicious fruits of the Mediterranean basin. In the 
kitchens, roasting before the fires on immense hearths, 
for the entertainment of fifteen guests, twelve wild 
boars, spitted successively at intervals of three minutes, 
so that, according to the duration of the feast, one of 
these animals might be exactly cooked at the very 
moment it was required to be served. Cool in snow 
the old Caecuban wine, the Falernian ripened for twenty 
years, the wines of Phlemtes, Chios, Issa, the imperial 
wine of Lesbos, the ripe wine of Rhodes, the sweet wine 
of Mitylene, the Saprian, smelling of violets, and the 
Thasos, said to "rekindle failing love." Light up the 
lamps, the torches, and the chandeliers, wind the pillars 
with streamers of fire ; open the mouths of the bronze 
5 



So CLEOPATRA. 

colossi that the icy water may flow and cool the atmos- 
phere, and the breasts of Isis that the sweet waters may 
perfume it ; call in the choirs of singing women with 
their harps and cythera, and the females who dance 
nude with castanets of gold in their hands ; add to them 
representations of comedies, the farces of mimes, the 
tricks of jugglers, and the phantasmagorias of the 
magicians; offer mock engagements in the harbor, 
and in the hippodrome chariot races and combats 
between lions ; summon the masqueraders and witness 
the processions where cluster, around the golden car 
of Bacchus and the Cyprian, fifteen hundred satyrs, 
a thousand cupids, and eight hundred beautiful slaves 
as nymphs and mimes. Finally, imagine all that 
Asiatic pomp, Egyptian state, and Grecian refinement 
and depravity, and Roman power and licentiousness 
blended in a single form — a sensual and splendid 
woman, delighting in pleasure and sumptuousness — can 
achieve with such elements and you will have some idea, 
though very vague and feeble, of the " Life Inimitable. " 
Sometimes Antony and Cleopatra indulged in more 
vulgar pleasures. Disguised, she as a barmaid, and 
he as a porter or a sailor, they ran, by night, about 
the streets of Alexandria, knocking at the doors of 
houses, abusing belated pedestrians, entering low 
lodging-houses, and quarreling with drunken men. 
To the great delight of Antony these frolics usually 
ended in fights. Despite his strength and skill, the 
Roman did not always win, and Cleopatra was some- 
times well splashed with mud; but victors or van- 
quished, the lovers returned happy to the palace, 



CLEOPATRA. 51 

quite willing to renew their adventures. The secret, 
however, escaped, and thenceforth the royal pair were 
handled more cautiously, without being entirely 
spared. 1 

These follies did not turn the Alexandrians against 
the triumvir as much as might have been supposed. 
If they had little esteem for him, they liked him for 
his good humor, and the ease with which he was 
approached. They delighted to say: " Antony wears 
for the Romans a tragic mask, but here he lays it 
aside, and assumes for us the mask of comedy. ,, His 
intimate companions and his officers, who shared 
without scruple his voluptuous and unbridled excesses, 
were still less inclined to resent them, for, like himself, 
they yielded to the bewitching charm of Cleopatra. 
They loved, they admired her, they bore cheerfully 
her snubs and sarcasms, and were not shocked, even 
if in the midst of a feast, at a sign from Antony, she 
quitted the banquet hall with him, and returning after 
a short absence resumed her position on the couch of 
the triclinium. They studied to please and divert her, 
each strove to be the vilest toady to the queen — 
" humillimus assentator reginae " — for a smile of 

1 Another incident, also related by Plutarch, says that Antony 
sometimes sought relaxation from the excesses of the "Life 
Inimitable " in more tranquil pleasures, such as angling. Vain 
even in trifles, and mortified if he caught nothing, he had 
fishes attached to his hook by a diver. The trick did not 
escape Cleopatra. The next day she had a salted fish fastened 
to his hook, which the triumvir drew gravely from the water 
amid shouts of laughter. From this time Antony renounced 
angling. 






52 CLEOPATRA. 

Cleopatra they sacrificed all dignity. Once, L. Plan- 
cus, a man of consular dignity, crowned with rushes, 
a fish's tail attached to his loins, and his naked body 
painted blue, actually performed in her presence the 
dance of Glaukos. 

With Caesar, Cleopatra had instinctively played the 
part of a crowned Aspasia, ever bewitching, but uniting 
dignity with grace, concealing the courtesan beneath 
the robe of a queen, ever equable in mood, expressing 
herself in the choicest language, talking politics, art, 
literature, her marvelous faculties rising without effort 
to the level of the lofty intelligence of the dictator : with 
Antony, Cleopatra, at first through policy, afterwards 
through love, played the part of a Lai's born by chance 
to a throne. Seeing at once that the inclinations of 
Antony were coarse and low, that his wit was common- 
place and his language very loose, she immediately set 
herself to the same tone. She kept pace with this 
great drinker, remaining even till dawn with the foam- 
ing flagons and goblets continually replenished; she 
accompanied him by night into the suspicious streets 
of Rhakotis, the old portion of Alexandria ; she jested 
cynically, sang amatory songs, recited licentious poems ; 
she quarreled with him, provoking and returning 
both abuse and blows. Nothing delighted Antony 
like the sight of that ravishing little hand threat- 
ening and beating him, or to hear from those divine 
lips, fit for the choruses of Sophocles or the odes of 
Sappho, the same words that he had heard bandied 
among the guard of the Esquiline gate and in the 
unmentionable dens of the Suburra. 




V. 



IN the winter of 39 B. c. the war of Persia re- 
called Antony into Italy. Through ambition 
or resentment against Octavius, and also, says 
Plutarch, through jealousy, Fulvia his wife had fomented 
this war. She hoped that these disturbances would 
compel Antony to leave Cleopatra, in order to defend 
his power threatened in Rome. Fulvia had succeeded 
but too well. Antony, it is true, was sailing towards 
Brundusium with two hundred sail, but the victorious 
Octavius was all-powerful in Italy, his adversaries dis- 
persed or proscribed; she herself had fled and was 
dying, without a hope of again seeing her husband. 
Antony heard of her death while touching at a port 
in Sicily. This, in the end, made a peace easy. 
Antony had taken no part in the war of Persia ; 
Fulvia alone, aided by her father-in-law, had excited 
it; her death rendered an accommodation possible 
between Antony and Octavius. Cocceius Nerva, 
Pollio, and Mecaenas contrived an interview at Brun- 
dusium. They were reconciled and made a new 



5' 



53 



54 CLEOPATRA. 

division of the empire : Octavius took the West, as 
far as the Adriatic; Antony, the East; and Lepidus 
had to be content with the Roman possessions in 
Africa. 

The treaty of Brundusium gave great satisfaction at 
Rome, where, after so much dissension and bloodshed, 
peace was ardently desired. To secure the fulfilment 
of it, the friends of the Triumvirs sought to unite them 
by family ties, and they proposed a marriage between 
Antony, who had just lost his wife, and Octavia, sister 
of Octavius, the widow of Marcellus. This noble 
woman, who to the rarest qualities added great 
beauty of person, could not fail, they thought, to 
secure and fix the love of Antony; she would thus 
maintain harmony between the brothers-in-Jaw, to the 
great advantage of both and the good of the state. 
Octavius gladly accepted the project, and notwith- 
standing the passion he still entertained for Cleopatra, 
Antony, in view of the political advantages of this union, 
took good care not to refuse. The marriage was forth- 
with celebrated. The law forbade widows to marry 
before the tenth month, but the senate granted a dis- 
pensation to the sister of Octavius. 

Antony remained at Rome during nearly the whole 
year 39 B. C. He lived in perfect accord with Octavius 
and shared with him the government of the empire; 
but although he had an equal part in authority and 
honors he felt that he was only second in Rome. In 
his justifiable pride as an old soldier, an accomplished 
warrior, the lieutenant of Caesar at Pharsalia, and com- 
mander-in-chief at Philippi, he was indignant when he 



CLEOPATRA. 55 

thought of the supremacy, acknowledged by all, of this 
almost beardless youth. A famous Egyptian soothsayer, 
whom probably Cleopatra herself had despatched to 
Rome, encouraged Antony in these ideas by his pre- 
dictions and horoscopes. " Your tutelar genius dreads 
that of Octavius," said he constantly. "Proud and 
lofty when alone, he loses power when you are with 
Octavius. Here your star is eclipsed ; it is only 
away from Rome — it is in the East that it shines 
in full luster." A new revolt of the Parthians gave 
Antony a pretext for leaving Rome. He set out with 
Octavia, and touched first at Athens. There he re- 
mained during the winter of 39-38 B. C, forgetting 
not only the Parthians (leaving his lieutenant Ven- 
tidius to conduct the war against them), but Alexan- 
dria, the " Life Inimitable," and Cleopatra herself. 1 
Doubtless he did not love his new wife, the beautiful 
Octavia, as ardently as he had loved Cleopatra, or in 
the same way, but assuredly he did love her. As 
feeble in will as powerful in body, Antony, the slave 
of woman, was easily dominated. Erewhile Fulvia had 
enslaved him, then Cleopatra had bewitched him, now 
he yielded to the quiet charm of Octavia. 

At the close of the winter he undertook a brief cam- 
paign into Syria against Antiochus of Commagene, and 
soon after returned to Athens, where he remained two 
years. In 36, a new difficulty occurring between him 
and Octavius on the subject of the naval expedition 
against the pirates, in which he had refused to second 

1 Appian says positively that Antony was in love with Octavia. 



56 CLEOPATRA. 

the latter, civil war again became imminent. Antony 
planned a descent upon Italy, with three hundred ves- 
sels ; Octavius, on his side, collected his legions ; if 
blood did not yet flow, swords were half unsheathed. 
In the hope of preventing this unnatural war, Octavia 
entreated Antony to take her with him into Italy. The 
port of Brundusium havingrefused entrance to Antony's 
fleet, his vessels moored before Tarentum. Informed 
of this, Octavius was leading his troops by forced 
marches against that city. Octavia desired to land 
alone. She went to meet Octavius on the way to 
Venosa; passing through the outposts and sentinels, 
she approached her brother, who was attended by 
Agrippa and Mecaenas. She warmly pleaded the 
cause of Antony, and especially conjured Octavius 
not to reduce her from the happiest of women to 
the most miserable. " At this moment," said she, 
"the eyes of the world are upon me, the wife of one 
of the rulers of Rome, and the sister of the other. 
Should the counsel of wrath prevail, should war be 
declared, it may be doubtful to which of you two 
Fate may give the victory, but it is certain to which- 
ever it inclines I shall be in grief and desolation. " 
The ambitious Octavius was already coveting uni- 
versal dominion, but he was a temporizer. He yielded 
to the prayers of Octavia, and for the second time this 
woman, who was the good genius of Antony, main- 
tained the peace of the Roman world. The two 
triumvirs met on the shores of the Gulf of Taren- 
tum, and after having lavished on each other various 
marks of affection they agreed to renew the triumvirate 



CLEOPATRA. 57 

for five years. Octavius gave Antony two legions to 
reenforce his army of the East, and in return Antony 
gave up one hundred triremes with brazen rostra and 
twenty Liburnian galleys for his Mediterranean fleet. 
These were the vessels that were to conquer at Actium ! 
From Tarentum, Octavia returned alone to Rome with 
the two children she had borne to Antony ; he himself 
embarked for Asia Minor, whither he was summoned 
by the war with the Parthians. The pair agreed to 
meet again, the expedition over, either at Athens or 
at Rome, when Antony hoped to receive the honors 
of a triumph. 

From the winter of 39 to the summer of 36 B. c, 
for three long years, Cleopatra remained thus parted 
from Antony. She was queen of Egypt and Cyprus, 
she had borne one son to Caesar and two to An- 
tony, she possessed immense revenues and trea- 
sures inexhaustible, but she suffered in her pride 
and in her love from the desertion of the triumvir. 
Cleopatra at twenty years of age had in all proba- 
bility not loved Caesar, who was over fifty. She loved 
Antony. In fact, though she had at first given her- 
self to the triumvir through policy, yet she soon felt 
for this rough soldier, handsome with the beauty of 
Hercules, master of the East, surrounded by glory and 
power, the same passion that she had inspired in him. 
If, indeed, the ancient authors do not state in words 
that Cleopatra loved Antony, the scenes which they 
depict can scarcely permit a doubt of it. There is 
a logic of circumstances. With his martial air, his 
lofty stature and broad chest, his mane of black hair 



58 CLEOPATRA. 

and eyes of gloom, his aquiline nose and harshly cut 
features, Antony certainly possessed manly attractions. 
His first wife, Fulvia, loved him passionately ; his sec- 
ond wife, Octavia, loved him supremely ; the haughty 
Cleopatra gave him love for love. Besides, Shakspeare j[/ I 
tells us this, and the word of this great painter of the 
human heart, of this marvelously comprehensive genius, 
may well make up for the silence on this point of a 
Dion Cassius or a Paul Orose. 

Great as might have been the suffering of this other 
Dido, one can scarcely imagine her enveloped in ha- 
biliments of woe and sighing in the retirement of her 
palace. In all probability Cleopatra continued her gay 
life of pompous show, giving to pleasure all the time 
that was left from official ceremonies, public audiences 
and other duties of the government, and her confer- 
ences with architects and engineers. 1 The Typhonium, 
at Denderah, dates from the reign of Cleopatra. As is 
shown by its cartouches, she also labored at the great 
temple of Denderah, at those of Edfou, Heminthis, and 
Coptos, as well as at the monuments of Thebes situated 
on the left bank of the Nile. At Alexandria, besides 
the Caesarium, which it appears was begun by Cleopatra, 
she had many fine buildings erected; but as with many 
other more ancient palaces and temples, there remains 
of them not a vestige on that surface which the ruins of 
centuries have in so many places raised to a height of 
fully ten meters. 

Did the queen seek to play the indifferent by leaving 

i Like all the Ptolemies, the last of the Lagidae was a great 
builder. 



CLEOPATRA, 59 

Antony without tidings, or, as Plutarch insinuates and 
Shakspeare declares, did she, during these three 
years, overwhelm him with dolorous appeals and burn- 
ing messages of love? According to Josephus, her 
voluptuous temperament was ever leading her into I 
transient amours. Besides Cneius Pompey, Caesar, 
Dellius, Antony, and Herod, king of the Jews, the five 
lovers who are accredited or attributed to her, the 
queen of Egypt had many flirtations and anonymous 
entanglements. Is this calumny? It is rather a slan- 
der. Be this as it may, the accusation is no proof that 
Cleopatra no longer loved Antony. These riddles of 
the heart and the senses are, after all, no enigma. 

As for Antony, it seems that he had indeed forgot- 
ten Cleopatra. Not only during the three years that 
he had passed with Octavia at Athens and Rome ; not 
only on his return from the expedition against Anti- 
ochus of Commagene had he not visited Egypt, but even 
on his way from Tarentum to Laodicea he had not 
touched at Alexandria, which was almost directly in his 
course. He sailed straight for Syria. By a singular 
fatality, scarcely had he set foot in Asia when he felt 
his passion rekindle with the utmost violence. He es- 
tablished himself at Laodicea, and at once despatched 
his friend Fonteius Capito into Egypt to conduct 
Cleopatra to Syria. The queen, enchanted, had no 
thought of delaying her departure in order to make 
herself the more desired, as she had done five years be- 
fore. She embarked at once, and was received at Lao- 
dicea by her lover with transports of joy. To prove 
otherwise than by caresses his unspeakable happiness at 



60 CLEOPATRA. 

seeing her again, he gave her, not jewels, but kingdoms : 
Chalcedon, Phoenicia, Ccelo-Syria, a great part of 
Cilicia, Genesereth in Judea, noted for its balm, and 
Nabathae in Arabia. Antony had no right to dis- 
pose of these territories, which belonged to the Roman 
people ; but mad with pride as much as with love he 
declared that " The glory of Rome was displayed much 
less in her conquests and possessions than in the gifts 
she bestowed. 1 

A few days after they were again compelled to part, 
with the promise, however, of meeting again in the 
spring at Alexandria. Antony passed with his army 
into Armenia; Cleopatra returned to Egypt, passing 
through Apamea, Damascus, and Petrea. She desired 
to settle with the kings of Judea and Arabia the amount 
of the tribute which these rulers were to pay yearly for 
the portions of territory which Antony had bestowed. 
The king of Arabia promised three hundred talents 
(sixteen hundred and sixty thousand francs) ; the 
tribute of the king of the Jews was greater. This king 
was Herod, whom the protection of Antony had a few 
years before placed on the throne. He went to Damas- 
cus to meet Cleopatra. According to Josephus, Herod, 
who was remarkably handsome, repulsed the shameless 
advances of the queen, even proposing to put her to 
death whilst she was in his power in order to deliver 
Antony from her fatal influence; but his counselors 
dissuaded him from this crime, telling him that from 

1 Antony also made a gift to Cleopatra of the 300,000 manu- 
scripts of the library of Pergamos, to replace a part of the volumes 
burned at Alexandria. 



CLEOPATRA. 61 

that moment he would incur the terrible vengeance of 
Antony. 

Cleopatra had not been long in Alexandria when 
she received a message from Antony, dated at Leucoc- 
oma, a city on the seaboard of Syria. He entreated 
her to join him at once with money, stores, and cloth- 
ing for his soldiers, who were destitute of everything. 
The war had been unsuccessful. By his too eager 
desire to rejoin Cleopatra in the spring, Antony had 
compromised the success of the campaign. When he 
reached Armenia, after a forced march of eight thousand 
stadia, he should have gone into winter quarters and 
not opened the campaign till the spring, with troops 
rested and refreshed, and at a favorable season. Too 
impatient to submit to this long delay, he entered 
Upper Media, and that his march might be more rapid 
he left behind all his siege machinery under the guard 
of one detachment. Chariots, towers, catapults, bat- 
tering-rams eighty feet long — all were destroyed by 
the Parthian cavalry. Through the want of these bat- 
teries Antony failed in the attack on the city of Phraata. 
Threatened by an overwhelming force, he was com- 
pelled to retreat. It was midwinter, the legionaries 
had to march through the snow amid freezing squalls. 
Every morning many were found frozen to death. 
Provisions failed, they lost their way, and the formidable 
Parthian cavalry harassed the exhausted columns. In 
this terrible retreat, the remembrance of which may 
have occurred to Napoleon before crossing the Nie- 
men, Antony recovered his energy and his qualities as 
a general; insensible to fatigue and hunger he was 
6 



62 CLEOPATRA. 

everywhere present; he was both imperator and 
centurion. Ever at the point where danger threat- 
ened most, in twenty-seven days he fought eight- 
een battles. Victor at night, the next day the 
struggle was renewed against fresh and ever-increas- 
ing forces. When Antony reached the coast of 
Syria his army was reduced from seventy thousand 
to thirty-eight thousand men. More fortunate than 
Crassus, however, the Romans brought back their 
eagles. 

Cleopatra in vain used all despatch ; she did not 
reach Antony as soon as he had hoped, and his im- 
patience became agony. He imagined that the queen 
would not comply with the appeal of a conquered man. 
Overcome by despair he fell into a sort of stupor. 
Then he sought distraction in drinking, but the pleas- 
ures of the table, of which he had been so utterly 
deprived during the campaign of Media, had no power 
to relieve his anxiety. At the very height of an orgy 
he would suddenly rise from the table, leave his com- 
panions, and hasten to the seashore, where he would 
remain whole hours with his eyes fixed on the horizon 
in the direction whence he expected Cleopatra to 
appear. 

At length the long-desired queen arrived with pro- 
visions and clothing, and about two hundred and forty 
talents of silver. The paying of the legionaries, 1 the 
reorganization of the army, and the collection of con- 
tributions compelled Antony to remain some time 

i Thirty-five drachmae were given to each legionary, and a less 
sum to every soldier. 



CLEOPATRA. 63 

longer at Leucocoma, and Cleopatra remained with 
him. Meanwhile, the news of the disastrous expedi- 
tion having reached Rome, Octavia, still devoted to 
her husband despite the efforts of Octavius, who had 
had the cruelty to inform her of the reunion of 
Antony and Cleopatra, determined to embark for 
Asia. She entreated Octavius to furnish her with 
ships, soldiers, and money. Report had informed 
Octavius of the renewed passion of Antony. He 
yielded to the request of Octavia in the hope that 
the insulting reception she was likely to receive from 
her husband might detach her from him forever and 
rouse the indignation of the Romans. Not to risk 
a meeting with Cleopatra, Octavia landed at Athens, 
whence she sent word to Antony of her arrival. But 
the triumvir would not dismiss his mistress ; he wrote 
to Octavia to remain at Athens, offering her as a 
pretext his intention of undertaking a new expedi- 
tion against the Parthians. In fact, the king of 
Media, incessantly a prey to these wild hordes, had 
proposed to Antony an alliance against them. With- 
out resenting Antony's refusal to receive her, of which 
refusal she did not deceive herself as to the cause, 
Octavia wrote again to Antony. This letter contained 
no reproaches; the young wife asked the triumvir 
simply whither she should send the reinforcements 
and the munitions she had brought for him. These 
included, besides military clothing and arms, machines 
of war and a large amount of money, three thousand 
chosen men as splendidly armed as the praetorian 
cohorts. Octavia had sacrificed a portion of her 



64 CLEOPATRA. 

private fortune to add this quota to the supplies. 
Niger was charged with the delivery of this letter. 
Often interviewed by Antony, who held him in great 
esteem, he mildly pointed out the wrongs of Octavia, 
reminded him of the rare virtues of this admirable 
woman, and exhorted him in the name of his own 
interests so seriously involved, and of his renown so 
sadly compromised, to abandon Cleopatra. 

Much shaken, Antony hesitated. He thought he 
would go to Media. By this means he cmild send 
Cleopatra back to Egypt, leave Octavia in Greece, 
and delay, until his return from the campaign, the 
decision which he could not resolve now to make; 
but Cleopatra, with the penetration of a woman who 
loves, read the heart of Antony. She saw herself a 
second time in danger of losing her lover; more- 
over, she had the advantage over Octavia of being 
near Antony. She redoubled her smiles and caresses, 
purposely exaggerating the passion already very 
warm and unfeigned which possessed her. Then, 
at the first broaching of his departure for Media, she 
pretended a mortal sorrow. She would neither eat 
nor sleep, she passed her days and nights in tears; 
her pale face, her haggard features and sunken 
eyes, her stony look and pallid lips struck all who 
approached her. Her women, her friends, the inti- 
mates of the triumvir whom she had won over by 
her flatteries and promises, reproached Antony with 
his want of feeling. They accused him of allowing 
to die of grief the most adorable of women, who 
breathed only for him. "Octavia," said they, "is 



CLEOPATRA. 65 

bound to you merely by her brother's interest; she 
enjoys all the advantages of a wife's title, while Cleo- 
patra, the queen of so many peoples, is called only 
the mistress of Antony, lpa>.|jiv*/]v 'Avxamoo. She re- 
fuses not this name, she does not feel humiliated by 
it — she glories in it: her sole bliss, her only ambition, 
is to live with thee ! " Antony yielded, overcome by 
such speeches and by the fear that Cleopatra, who 
possessed his whole heart, and whom only his reason 
urged him to resist, would die of grief or take poison. 
He therefore postponed his expedition into Media, and 
returned with Cleopatra to Alexandria, where they 
resumed the "Life Inimitable." 

At the commencement of the year 34, Antony joined 
his legions in Asia. In a few days he defeated the 
Armenians, made prisoner the king and all his fam- 
ily, and reduced the country to subjection. After this 
glorious campaign Antony was to enjoy a triumph at 
Rome, but through love and devotion to Cleopatra, 
whom he wished to share his honors, the ceremony 
was given at Alexandria. For the first time a Roman 
received the reward of a triumph outside of Rome. It 
was an insult to the city, which thus seemed discrowned ; 
it was an offense to the senate and the people, from 
whom alone the honor of a triumph could be received. 

This scandalous triumph was of the utmost magnifi- 
cence. Through Alexandria, decorated with the richest 
ornaments and massed with flowers, filed to the sound 
of horns and trumpets, the legionaries, the auxiliary* 
cavalry, the priests, the censer-bearers, and the depu- 
ties from different cities, wearing crowns of gold, 
6* 



66 CLEOPATRA. 

chariots filled with trophies, and thousands of captives. 
Before the triumphal chariot, drawn by four white 
horses, walked the king Artavasdes, his wife, and two 
sons, bound in chains of gold. When the chariot 
arrived before Cleopatra, who, seated on a throne of 
gold and ivory, presided at the triumph, Antony 
stayed his quadriga, and presented to the queen his royal 
captives. After the procession and the sacrifices, he 
gave a mammoth banquet to the citizens of Alexandria. 
Enormous tables were spread in the gardens of the 
palace and in the public squares. The feast over, 
Antony seated Cleopatra on her throne of gold and 
ivory [chryselephantine], and placed himself on a simi- 
lar one ; the trumpets sounded, the soldiers presented 
arms, and the whole people collected in crowds around 
the two lovers. Then Antony proclaimed that from that 
time Cleopatra should be called the Queen of Kings, 
and her son, Caesarion, the heir of Julius, the divine, the 
King of Kings ; and he renewed to them the sovereignty 
of Egypt and Cyprus. Next he publicly settled the state 
of the three children borne him by Cleopatra. He gave 
to the eldest, Alexander, called by him Helios, Armenia, 
Media, and the country of the Parthians; to his twin- 
sister Cleopatra, whom he called Selene, the kingdom 
of Lybia; to Ptolemy, Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. At 
each proclamation of the triumvir, heralds repeated his 
words and the trumpets sounded. The same day the 
youthful (infant) sovereigns were presented by Antony 
to the army and the people. Alexander appeared in the 
robes of the Mede with the cidaris (sash) of the kings 
of Persia, and a platoon of Armenians as a guard of 



CLEOPATRA. 67 

honor. Ptolemy had an escort of Macedonian mer- 
cenaries armed with lances eighteen feet long; he wore 
the long purple mantle, the sandals embroidered with 
gold, and the crown of precious stones of the successors 
of Alexander. 

Cleopatra had already set the example of such mas- 
querades. Two years before, on her return from 
Laodicea, when Antony had added to her dominions 
Phoenicia, Chalcedon, Ccelo-Syria and many other 
countries she had opened a new era and had assumed 
the name of the New Isis, or New Goddess. It was in 
the narrow garment of Isis, and on her head the cover- 
ing of Isis (the golden horns, between which rested the 
vulture head), with the lotoform scepter in her hand, 
that she presided at public ceremonies or gave state 
audiences. 

Submissive to these caprices Antony allowed him- 
self to be represented in paintings and groups of statu- 
ary under the figures of Osiris and Bacchus, seated be- 
side Cleopatra Isis and Cleopatra Selene. It seemed 
that bewitched by his mistress he renounced his country 
for her. He accepted the office of grand-gymnasiarch of 
Alexandria. He commanded that the effigy of the 
Egyptian queen should be engraved on the back of his 
imperial coins ; he even dared to inscribe the name of 
Cleopatra on the shields of his legionaries. He per- 
mitted, by a shameless inversion of parts, that the queen 
should go about Alexandria seated in a curule chair, 
whilst he, carrying a scimeter and wearing a purple robe 
with jeweled clasps, accompanied her on foot surround- 
ed by Egyptian officers and the base troop of eunuchs. 




££&^&^&£^ 



VI. 



SY deposing Lepidus, Octavius had changed 
the triumvirate into a duumvirate, and the 
empire became divided between himself and 
Antony. But the domination of the East satisfied the 
pride of Antony no better than the domination of the 
West sufficed for the ambition of Octavius. Though 
twice deferred, the civil war remained inevitable. In 
his extreme caution, Octavius would still have delayed 
it ; in his folly, Antony precipitated it. He despised 
Octavius as a general ; his flatterers and his soldiers, who. 
adored him, predicted victory to his arms ; Cleopatra, 
who retained the angry recollection of the insolent 
reception by the Romans, burned to avenge it, and 
confiding in the sword of Antony, she already swore 
" By the justice which she would soon dispense at the 
Capitol."* 

i The Egyptian, says Florus forcibly, demanded as the price 
of her favors, the Roman Empire from a drunken emperor : 
11 Mulier aegyptia ab ebrio imperatore pretium libidinum Roma- 
nura Imperium petit." 

68 



CLEOPATRA. 69 

Antony began by overwhelming Octavius with re- 
proaches and dark threats. His clients, who were 
numerous in Rome, his friends, his emissaries sent 
from Egypt, made themselves busy in enhancing with 
the people his grievances, real and supposed. Octavius, 
said they, has robbed Sextus Pompey of Sicily without 
dividing the spoils with his colleague : he has not 
even restored the hundred and twenty triremes bor- 
rowed for that war ; he has deposed Lepidus and re- 
tained for himself alone the provinces, the legions, and 
the ships of war that had been assigned to that triumvir; 
he has distributed to his own soldiers nearly all the pub- 
lic lands of Italy, without keeping any for the veterans 
of Antony. Every act of the government of Octavius 
was criticized and incriminated. The people were re- 
minded that he was crushing Italy under the weight of 
taxes ; he was accused of aiming at sovereign power. 
They even went the length of saying that the true heir 
of Caesar was not Octavius, his nephew, but Caesar's 
own son Caesarion, and that a second will of the Dic- 
tator would some day be forthcoming. According to 
Dion Cassius, Antony, by his formal recognition of 
Caesarion as the legitimate son of Caesar, had raised to a 
climax the uneasiness and anger of Octavius. 

Meanwhile Octavius bided his time ; his preparations 
for war were not complete, and Antony was still popu- 
lar in Rome, where he maintained very many clients, 
protected by Octavia his wife. She, in spite of the 
insult inflicted by Antony, was still wholly devoted to 
him ; in vain, on her return from Greece, had Octavius 
besought her to forget her husband and to quit his 



7o 



CLEOPATRA. 



dwelling ; she had utterly refused to do so. She con- 
tinued to reside in that famous mansion, once the 
property of the great Pompey, there educating with 
equal care and tenderness her own children by Antony 
and those of his first wife. The clients of Antony and 
the friends he sent from Alexandria were sure of find- 
ing support and assistance from Octavia ; she even 
obtained favors for them from Octavius, irritated though 
he might be ; finally she incessantly assumed in his 
presence the defense of Antony, excusing both faults 
and follies, and declaring that it was a hateful thing for 
two great emperors to incite Romans to slay each other, 
the one to avenge personal wrongs, the other for the 
love of a foreign woman. 

Octavius, who took for his motto: "That which is 
well done is done quickly enough," sat celeriter feri 
quidquid fiat satis bene, appeared to give way to the 
prayers of Octavia ; but if he made no haste to declare 
war he was preparing it slowly, and preparing also 
public opinion. He made the most of Antony's dis- 
graceful life in Egypt — his enslavement by Cleopatra. 
It was said in the senate, in the army, among the 
people, "Antony is no longer a Roman ; he is the slave 
of the queen of Egypt, the incestuous daughter of 
the Lagidae : his country is Alexandria and thither he 
would transfer the capital of the empire ; his gods are 
Knouph with the ram's head, Ra of the vulture beak, 
the dog-headed Anubis — latrans Anubis; his counsel- 
ors are the eunuch Mardion, Charmion, and Iras, the 
tire-woman of that Cleopatra on whom he has promised 
to bestow Rome. " These idle tales inspired the Romans 



CLEOPATRA. 71 

with a sentiment of horror which still survives in the 
verses of the poets of that period: " Among our eagles," 
says Horace, "the sun beholds, O infamy, the base 
standard of an Egyptian woman. . . . Romans sold 
to a woman blush not to bear arms for her. ... In 
the intoxication of her success and the madness of her 
hopes, this monster — monstrum Mud — dreams the 
fall of the Capitol, and is preparing with her troops of 
despicable slaves and eunuchs the funeral rites of the 
empire." " Thus," writes Propertius, " this royal 
prostitute — meretrix regina — eternal disgrace of the 
blood of Philip, would force the Tiber to endure the 
menaces of the Nile, and thrust aside the Roman trum- 
pets to make way for the shrieking sistra (Egyptian 
timbrels)." 1 

Domitius ^Enobarbus and C. Sossius were elected 
consuls 32 B. C Both were partisans of Antony, and 
made vain attempts to save him by unmasking Octa- 
vius to the senate, but the majority declared against 
them. Dreading the anger of the implacable Perusian 
lover of justice they went into exile with several of the 
senators. They could not at once join Antony, who 
was in Armenia, negotiating the marriage of his very 
youthful son, Alexander, with Jotapa, daughter of the 

1 These verses were written after the battle of Actium, 31 B. c, 
but they no less indicate the sentiments of the Romans at 
the commencement of the war. If this indignation and hatred 
obtained with such violence after the victory, what must they 
have been in the very hour of danger? Lucan says : " This 
woman, the reproach of Egypt, the fatal Erinys of Latium, 
incestuous daughter of the Ptolemies ; who made the Capitol 
tremble with her sistra.'' 



72 CLEOPATRA, 

king of Media. They announced to him by letter 
that Octavius was hastening his preparations, and that 
immediate hostilities might be expected. Antony, 
like a good general, determined, in order to get the 
start of his enemy, to carry the war into Italy. He 
immediately sent Canidius with sixteen legions to the 
sea-coast of Asia Minor, and himself proceeded to 
Ephesus, where all his allies were directed to unite 
their contingents. Cleopatra was the first to arrive, 
with two hundred vessels of from three to ten banks 
of oars, and a war subsidy of twenty thousand talents 
(one hundred thousand francs). 

It would have been better for Antony had this fleet 
remained in Egyptian waters, this money in the treas- 
ury of the Lagidae, and Cleopatra herself in Alexandria. 
This bewitching but fatal being brought to the Roman 
camp her gorgeous licentiousness and her unbridled 
desire of pleasure. At Ephesus where she landed, 
at Samos whither they afterwards proceeded, the mad 
follies of Alexandria were renewed. The constant 
arrivals of kings, governors, deputations from cities 
bringing to Antony troops and vessels served as a 
pretext for magnificent feasts and innumerable dra- 
matic representations. A thousand comedians and rope- 
dancers were collected, and whilst the whole world, 
says Plutarch, echoed with the noise of arms and 
the groans of men, at Samos nothing was heard but 
laughter and the music of flutes and citharae. Time 
passed quickly in these pleasures, and there was not 
an hour to lose if the offensive were to be taken. 
Until then the friends and captains of Antony, Del- 



CLEOPATRA, 73 

lius, Marcus Silanus, Titius, Plancus, all equally yield- 
ing to the seductions of Cleopatra, had made no effort 
to separate their leader from this fatal woman. Now 
the great game was to be played, and in this game 
they staked, as it were, their lives against the domin- 
ion of the world. They appealed to Antony. y£no- 
barbus, the only one of the Antonites who had never 
hailed Cleopatra as queen, was spokesman, and 
declared plainly that the Egyptian must be sent back 
to Alexandria till the close of the war. Antony prom- 
ised to send her. Unfortunately for him, Cleopatra 
heard of this proceeding. Now less than ever would 
she leave Antony alone, exposed to the final appeals of 
Octavia her former successful rival ; she knew too well 
the vacillating mind and weak soul of Antony. Would 
he have strength to refuse a reconciliation so much 
desired in the camp as well as at Rome, which would 
consolidate its threatened power and secure peace to 
# the empire ? Cleopatra won over Canidius, after ^Eno- 
barbus the most noted captain of the army of the 
East; and by dint of prayers, coquetry, and money, 
it is said, she persuaded him to espouse her cause. 
He represented to Antony that it was neither just nor 
wise to send away an ally who furnished to the war 
supplies so considerable; that he would thus alienate 
the Egyptians, whose ships formed the main strength 
of the fleet. He added that Cleopatra was, in the 
council, inferior to none of the kings who were to 
fight under the orders of Antony; she, who had so 
long governed alone so great an empire, and who, 
since they had been associated together, had acquired 
7 



74 CLEOPATRA. 

still greater experience in affairs. He talked against 
reason, but he spoke in accordance with the heart of 
Antony, and Cleopatra remained with the army. 

Meanwhile the friends that still remained to Antony 
in Rome despatched one of their number, Geminius, 
to make a last attempt to free him from his mistress. 
Geminius for days tried in vain to see Antony alone. 
Cleopatra, who suspected the Roman of working in the 
interests of Octavia, never left her lover for an instant. 
At length, at the close of a supper, Antony, half-drunk, 
called upon Geminius to declare instantly the object of 
his coming. " The matters of which I have to speak," 
replied Geminius angrily, " cannot be discussed after 
drinking; but what I can tell you as well drunk as 
sober is that all would be well if Cleopatra returned to 
Egypt." In a rage, the queen exclaimed: " You do 
well to speak before the torture compels it." Antony^ 
was no less enraged. The next day Geminius, feeling 
by no means in safety, reembarked for Italy. 

The vindictive Egyptian also bore malice against the 
friends of Antony who had joined with ^Enobarbus to 
procure her departure. Sarcasms, offenses, insults, and 
ill offices were all employed by her so effectually that 
Silanus, Dellius (her former lover, it is said), and 
Plancus and Titius, both persons of consular dignity, 
abandoned the party of Antony. 

As much to revenge themselves on their former leader 
as to conciliate their new master, Plancus and Titius on 
their return to Rome revealed to Octavius certain 
clauses in the will of Antony, the divulging of which 
would complete his ruin in the minds of the people. 



CLEOPATRA. 75 

Antony, recognizing Caesarion as the son of Caesar, 
was dividing the Roman East among his other children 
and the queen of Egypt, and willed that even should he 
die in Rome, his body should be transported to Alex- 
andria and delivered to Cleopatra. The two officers 
added that they were positive as to these dispositions, 
as, at the desire of Antony, they themselves had read 
the will, had affixed their seal, and had deposited it in 
the college of the Vestals. Octavius demanded the will. 
The Vestals declared that they would not give it up, 
but that if he would come and take it himself they could 
not prevent him. Octavius felt no scruple in doing so ; 
he took the will and read it before the Senate. The 
Conscript Fathers, it must be confessed, were no less in- 
dignant at the violation of the will of Antony than at 
the contents of the document itself. Octavius, however, 
had the excuse of acting for the good of the people. 
The skillful and patient politician was about to at- 
tain his end. He procured also a senatus-consultum 
(a judgment of the Senate), by which Antony was de- 
posed from the consular dignity, and the same day, 
January 1, 31 B. C, he declared war, not on Antony, 
but on the queen of Egypt. This was a last tribute to 
public opinion — Caesar would not risk the odium of 
arming Roman against Roman. 

He knew well that Antony would not desert Cleo- 
patra, and therefore by conducting his legions against 
the detested Egyptian, he would throw on Antony the 
responsibility of the civil war. 

Antony and Cleopatra passed at Athens the autumn 
of 32 and part of the winter of 31 B. C. Whilst their 



76 CLEOPATRA. 

soldiers were exhausting all the cities of Greece by 
enormous requisitions, and completing their crews 
by means of the press-gang, dragging sons from 
their mothers, and husbands from their wives, the 
lovers continued to lead their gay life. Spectacles, 
public games, interminable feasts, and mad orgies in- 
cessantly succeeded each other. Jealous of the memory 
which Octavia had left in Athens, where her beauty 
was still talked of, Cleopatra would fain have effaced 
it by her pomp, her flatteries, and her largesses to 
the people. The Athenians, setting little value on 
honors, even now somewhat obsolete, which it was in 
their power to bestow, determined to offer Cleopatra 
the " Freedom of the City," and decreed that a statue 
should be erected to her. The decree was presented 
to her by deputies, among whom figured Antony as 
an Athenian citizen. The document was read to 
the queen, after which her virtues and merits were 
eulogized in an eloquent address. The vanity of 
Cleopatra was gratified, but her hatred unappeased. 
She exacted from Antony his repudiation of Octavia, 
and that from Athens itself, that city where the couple 
had spent three happy years, he should send to Rome 
his command for her to depart from his house. Octa- 
via quitted it, clad in mourning and weeping, and 
leading with her the two children of Antony. The 
unhappy woman loved him still. 1 

1 It therefore seems probable that it was in the autumn of 32 
B. C. that Antony must have married Cleopatra. 



VII. 



HNTONY had not abandoned his original 
design of preventing the combining of the 
forces of Octavius by carrying the war into 
Italy; but he had lost much time. In the spring of 
31 B. c, his army and fleet being concentrated at 
Actium, at the mouth of the Gulf of Ambracia, he 
was preparing to join them when he learned that 
some Roman vessels were coasting the shores of 
Epirus. It was but the vanguard of Agrippa's fleet, 
but the presence of this vanguard showed that the 
preparations of Octavius were in a very advanced 
state, if not complete. The time for surprising him 
was past. Antony decided, before forming new plans, 
to wait till the Romans should have defined their plan 
of the campaign. The fleet and the army, therefore, 
remained at Actium, but as the place was unwhole- 
some and a stay there wearisome, Antony went to 
Patras with Cleopatra. Early in August he received 
the important news that the Roman fleet had just 
anchored off the coast of Epirus, that the troops were 



78 



CLEOPATRA. 



landing, and that Octavius was already at Toryne. 
Antony at once set out for Actium, much excited 
and very ill pleased that the enemy so quickly and 
so easily had taken up its position. Cleopatra jested 
with his uneasiness: " What a misfortune," said she, 
"that Octavius should be sitting upon a dipper!" — 
in Greek Toryne means a dipper. 

The army of Antony, consisting of nineteen legions 
and twelve thousand cavalry, and numerous auxili- 
aries, Cilicians, Paphlagonians, Cappadocians, Jews, 
Medes, Arabs, amounted to one hundred and ten 
thousand men. His fleet numbered nearly five 
hundred vessels of three, five, eight, and ten banks 
of oars. These last, built in Egypt, were veritable 
floating fortresses, surmounted with towers and fur- 
nished with powerful war-engines. Octavius had eighty 
thousand foot soldiers recruited in Italy, Sicily, Spain, 
and Gaul, ten thousand horse, and but two hundred 
and fifty vessels, triremes with rostra and light Libur- 
nian galleys in about equal numbers. If the land 
forces were about of equal effective strength the dis- 
proportion between the naval forces was immense ; but 
the ships of Octavius made up for their inferiority of num- 
bers by their superiority of manoeuvring, and the excel- 
lence of their crews, who had all been with Agrippa 
during the long Sicilian war. On the contrary, Antony's 
sailors were comparatively few, and most of them were 
going into battle for the first time ; his heavy ships were 
clumsy in their evolutions, — as the hyperbolical Florus 
expressed it: "The sea groaned under their weight, 
and the wind exhausted itself in moving them." 



CLEOPATRA. 79 

The army of Antony occupied the northern point of 
Acarnania, with a strong detachment on the coast of 
Epirus, which was directly opposite. Firmly entrenched 
within defenses raised during the winter, he commanded 
the narrow passage into the Gulf of Ambracia in which 
his fleet was moored. Octavius had pitched his camp 
in Epirus, at a short distance from the advanced posts 
of Antony. Antony held an excellent position for de- 
fense, which enabled him to resist successfully the 
attacks of the Romans: for the Pass of Actium could not 
be forced ; but he was blockaded on the side of the sea 
whence almost all his stores and munitions must reach 
him. 

For several days the two armies were face to face* 
Octavius, desirous to engage, endeavored by every 
feint to draw his adversary into action either on land 
or sea. Antony, uneasy, anxious, hesitating, could not 
decide what step to take. He embarked the greater 
portion of his troops and transferred them to the coast 
of Epirus, as if to attack the Roman camp; then he 
changed his mind and recrossed into Acarnania. The 
officers of Antony, auguring ill of the manoeuvring 
qualities of his huge vessels, and, at the same time, full 
of confidence in the valor of the legionaries, counseled 
him to fight the battle on land. This was also the de- 
sire of the army. At a review he was accosted by an 
old centurion all seamed with scars: "Oh, Emperor, 
dost thou distrust these wounds and this sword, that 
thou puttest thy hope in rotten wood ? Let the men of 
Egypt and Phoenicia fight on the sea, but to us, give us 
the land where we are used to hold our own, and where 



/ 



80 CLEOPATRA. 

we know how to conquer or to die." But Antony was 
disturbed by sinister omens. In many places his 
statues and those of Cleopatra had been struck by 
lightning ; at Alba a marble statue, erected in honor of 
the triumvir, had been found covered with sweat. "A 
sign still more alarming," says Plutarch, "some swal- 
lows, having built their nests under the stern of the 
Antoniad, Cleopatra's flagship, other swallows came, 
drove the first away, and killed their young ones." 
Frequent defeats in the skirmishes around Actium, the 
desertion of Domitius ^Enobarbus, who suddenly passed 
over to the enemy, the defection of two of the allied 
kings, who, with their forces, abandoned the army, 
confirmed these evil omens in the superstitious soul 
of Antony. He suspected everything and everybody 
— his fortune, his soldiers, his friends, Cleopatra her- 
self. Seeing her sad, discouraged, a prey to gloomy 
thoughts — for she, too, dwelt on the omens of the 
swallows of the Antoniad and the shattered statues — 
he fancied that she wished to poison him, that by this 
crime she might secure the favor of Octavius. For 
days he would take neither food nor drink that she had 
not first tasted. Out of pity for her lover, Cleopatra 
lent herself willingly to this caprice. One night, how-^ 
ever, at the close of the supper, she took a rose from ^ 
her crown and lightly dipped it into a cup of wine 
which she handed smilingly to Antony. He put it to his 
lips, when she arrested his hand and gave the poisoned 
wine to a slave to drink, who immediately fell to the 
floor writhing in mortal agony. "O Antony!" ex- 
claimed Cleopatra, " what a woman you suspect. See 



CLEOPATRA. 81 

now that neither means nor opportunities to slay you 
would fail me if I could live without you ! " 

The anxiety and depression reached the army, en- 
camped in an unwholesome situation, and with reduced 
supplies. One day, Canidius himself, hitherto so eager 
for battle, counseled the abandonment of the fleet, and 
to carry the war into Thrace, where Dikome, king of 
the Getse, promised to send reinforcements. But what 
need was there of reinforcements, since they were 
already superior in numbers to the enemy ? Cleopatra 
offered another opinion, if no less shameful, at any rate 
more sensible. Flight against flight, it would be better 
to go to Egypt than to Thrace. She proposed to leave 
part of the army in Greece, to garrison the fortified 
towns ; to embark the rest, and set sail for Egypt, 
passing through the fleet of Octavius. After fresh 
hesitation, Antony adopted this plan, though assuredly 
it was bitter to flee from an army whose leader he 
despised. All tends to the belief, besides, that Antony 
hoped to destroy the Roman fleet in the naval engage- 
ment that must ensue on issuing from the narrow pas- 
sage of Actium. If he gained the victory he would be 
able to regain his position and attack the demoralized 
army of Octavius ; if the victory remained doubtful — 
for with so powerful a fleet he could not admit the 
supposition of a defeat— he would sail for Egypt. 
The retreat would be but a last resource. 

Desertion and disease had greatly reduced the crews 
of the galleys. Antony decided to burn one hundred 
and forty of them in order to fill up with their crews the 
remainder of the fleet. Twenty-two thousand legion- 



82 CLEOPATRA. 

aries, auxiliaries, and slingers were put on board the 
ships. Not to discourage the soldiers and sailors, it 
was concealed from them that these preparations for 
battle were indeed preparations for retreat. The secret 
was so well kept, that it was a surprise to the pilots 
when they received orders to carry the sails with them. 
They recollected that in battle the vessels were worked 
with oars only. Antony had it reported that the sails 
were carried the better to pursue the enemy after the 
victory. 

On the morning of September 2d the vessels of An- 
tony formed in four grand divisions, crossed the channel 
of Actium, and, issuing thence, were disposed in battle 
array opposite the fleet of Octavius, who was awaiting 
them at eight or ten stadia from the land. On the side 
of Antony, he himself, with Publicola, commanded the 
right wing ; Marcus Justus and Marcus Octavius the 
center, and Ccelius the left wing. Cleopatra com- 
manded the reserve with sixty Egyptian vessels. On 
the side of the Romans, Octavius commanded the right 
wing, Agrippa the left, and Arruntius the center. 
About noon the battle began. The troops on land, 
who were under arms and motionless near the shore, 
saw not, as is usual in sea-fights, the galleys rush at 
each other seeking to strike with their rostra or beaks 
of steel. On account of their slow rate of speed, the 
heavy vessels of Antony could not strike with that 
impetuosity which gives force to the shock, and the 
light galleys of the Romans feared to break their rostra 
against those enormous ships, constructed of strong 
beams joined with iron. The battle was like a succes- 



CLEOPATRA. 83 

sion of sieges, a combat of moving citadels with moving 
towers. Three or four Roman galleys would unite to 
attack one of Antony's vessels, so huge, says Virgil, 
that they looked like the Cyclades sailing on the waters. 
The soldiers cast grappling-irons, fired burning arrows 
on the decks, attached fire-ships to the keels, and 
rushed to board them, while the powerful batteries 
placed at the summit of the towers of the beleaguered 
ship showered down on the assailants a hail of stones 
and arrows. At the very first the Roman right wing, 
commanded by Octavius, gave way before the attack 
of the division under Ccelius. At the other extremity 
Agrippa, having designed a movement to surround 
Antony and Publicola, these turned on their right and 
thus uncovered the center of the line of battle. The 
swift Liburnian galleys improved the opportunity to 
attack the vessels of the two Marcuses, in the rear of 
which was the reserve under Cleopatra. Success and 
reverse went hand in hand ; the two sides fought 
with equal fury, and the victory was doubtful, but 
the nervousness of Cleopatra was to be the ruin of 
Antony's cause. For hours she had suffered a fever of 
agony. From the deck of the Antoniad she anxiously 
watched the movements of the fleets. In the beginning 
she had hoped for victory ; now, terrified by the clamor 
and tumult, her only desire was to escape. She 
awaited with ever-increasing impatience the signal for 
retreat. Suddenly she noticed the right wing moving 
towards the coast of Epirus, the left putting to sea, and 
the center, which protected her, attacked, separated, 
broken, penetrated by the Roman Liburnians. Then, 



84 CLEOPATRA. 

"pale with her approaching death" — pallens mortefu- 
tura — listening only to her terror, she ordered the sails to 
be hoisted, and with her sixty vessels she passed through 
the midst of the combatants and fled towards the open 
sea. In the midst of the battle Antony perceived 
the motion of the Egyptian squadron, and recognized 
the Antoniad by its purple sails; Cleopatra was fleeing, 
robbing him at the decisive moment of his powerful 
reserve ; but the queen could not order the retreat, he 
alone could give the signal for that. There is some 
mistake — a feint, perhaps a panic. Antony in his turn 
hoists the sails of his galley, and rushes in the wake of 
Cleopatra. He will bring back the Egyptian vessels 
and restore the chances of the battle. But before 
overtaking the Antoniad the unhappy man has time 
to think. Cleopatra has deserted him either through 
cowardice or treason ; he can bring back to Actium 
neither her nor her fleet. Next he thinks he will 
return to the combat, which is now only a rout, to die 
with his soldiers — to die without seeing Cleopatra 
once more ! he cannot do it. A fatal power drags him 
after this woman. He reaches the Antoniad, but then 
he is overcome with his disgrace. He refuses to see the 
queen. He seats himself on the prow of the vessel, 
his head on his hands, and remains thus for three days 
and three nights. 




VIII. 

^^^L^HE Egyptian fleet and some other vessels 
gt f which had followed the fugitives put into 
^^^*A# the port of Caenopolis, near Cape Tenarum. 
Often repulsed by the obstinate silence of Antony, 
Cleopatra's women finally succeeded in bringing about 
an interview between the lovers. They supped and 
passed the night together. O, wretched human weak- 
ness ! 

Some of his friends who had escaped from Actium 
brought them news. The fleet had made an obstinate 
resistance, but all the vessels which were not sunk or 
burned were now in possession of Octavius. The army 
still maintained its position, and appeared to be faithful. 
Antony at once sent messengers and despatched Canid- 
ius with orders to recall those troops, and himself 
embarked for Cyrenaica, where he still had several 
legions. One of his vessels bore his jewels, his valu- 
ables, and all the services of gold and silver which he 
had used at his entertainments of the kings, his allies. 
Before departing from Caenopolis, Antony divided all 
8 8 5 






86 CLEOPATRA. 

this wealth among a few of his friends, whom he con- 
strained to seek an asylum in Greece, refusing to allow 
them any longer to follow his fatal fortunes. When 
parting from them he talked in the kindest manner, 
seeking to console them and regarding their tears with 
a sad but kindly smile. 

Cleopatra had sailed from Greece some days before 
Antony. She was in haste to return to Egypt, fearing 
that the news of the disaster of Actium might provoke 
a revolution. To mislead the people for a few days, 
and thus gain time to take her measures, she entered 
the port of Alexandria with all the parade of a triumph. 
Her ships, their prows adorned with crowns, resounded 
with the songs of victory and the music of flutes and 
sistra. No sooner was she reinstalled in the palace 
than she put to death many whose intrigues she feared. 
These executions, which benefited the royal treasury, 
for death involved the confiscation of the wealth of the 
real or pretended guilty, delivered Cleopatra from all 
fear of an immediate revolution, but she none the less 
felt a mortal terror about the future. She still suffered 
from the horror of Actium; — at times haunted by the 
idea of suicide, she contemplated a death as pompous 
as had been her life, and she erected at the extremity 
of Cape Lochias an immense tomb, in which to con- 
sume herself and her treasures. At other times she 
thought of flight, and by her orders a number of her 
largest ships were transported with great reinforce- 
ments of men, engines, and beasts of burden across the 
isthmus to the Red Sea. She had a vision of embark- 
ing with all her wealth for some unknown country of 



CLEOPATRA. 87 

Asia or Africa, there to renew her existence of lust and 
pleasure. 

Antony soon returned to Alexandria. He was in a 
state of gloomy discouragement ; his army in Acar- 
nania, deserted by Canidius, who had taken flight, 
had surrendered to Octavius after a week of hesita- 
tion ; in Cyrenaica he could not even obtain a meet- 
ing with his lieutenant Scarpus, who, having taken 
sides with the Caesarians, had threatened his life ; 
Herod, his creature, whom he had made king of the 
Jews, had offered his allegiance to the conqueror of 
Actium ; defection on all sides with his allies as with 
his legions. Antony reached the point of doubting even 
Cleopatra ; he would scarcely see her. Exasperated 
at the cruelty of the gods, and still more so at the 
perfidy of men, he resolved to pass in solitude the 
wretched days that his enemies might yet permit him to 
live. The story of Timon, the misanthrope of Athens, 
which he had heard in happier days, recurred to his 
memory, and, determined to live like Timon, he settled 
in the barren mole of Poseidon, and busied himself 
there in erecting a tower which he intended to call the 
Timonion. 

Cleopatra yielded less submissively to fate. At- 
tacked in the crisis of danger by a fainting courage to 
which Antony was an utter stranger, the immediate 
danger past she recovered all her powers. With her 
exalted imagination she could not despair either wholly 
or even for very long. She learned that the vessels she 
had had transported to the Red Sea had been burned 
by the Arabs, and thus her flight prevented. She at 



88 CLEOPATRA. 

once prepared for determined resistance. Whilst 
Antony was losing his time playing the misanthrope, 
the queen raised fresh forces, furnished new vessels, 
formed new alliances, repaired the fortifications of 
Pelusium and Alexandria, distributed arms to the 
people, and to encourage the Alexandrians to the de- 
termined defense of their city, she inscribed the name 
of her son, Csesarion, in the rolls of the militia. An- 
tony could not but admire the courage and energy of 
Cleopatra, and, entreated by his friends besides being 
weary of his solitude, he resumed his residence at the 
palace. The queen received him as in the happy days 
of his return from Cilicia or Armenia. They again 
enjoyed with the friends of the last hour banquets, 
festivals, orgies — only " The Inimitables" changed 
their appellation, and called themselves "The Insepa- 
rables in Death " : ol sovowcoGavoojxevoi. 

The choice of this funereal name, assumed as much 
from resignation as bravado, sufficiently reveals the 
state of mind of the lovers. Antony, it seems, had 
lost all hope ; Cleopatra still hoped, but with intervals 
of gloomy discouragement. At such times she would 
descend to the crypts of the palace, near the prisons 
of the condemned ; slaves would drag them, a few at 
a time, from their cells to test on them the effects of 
different poisons. Cleopatra watched with a curiosity, 
more painful even than cruel, the dying agonies of 
the victims. The experiments were frequently re- 
peated, for the queen could not discover the poison 
of her dreams — a poison that slays instantly without 
pain and without shock. She noticed that violent 



( 



CLEOPATRA. 89 

poisons killed swiftly but with frightful torture, and 
that less active ones inflicted lingering agonies; then 
she studied the bites of serpents, and after new experi- 
ments she discovered that the venom of an Egyptian 
viper, called in Greek "Aspis," caused neither con- 
vulsion nor any painful sensation, and led by a 
constantly increasing drowsiness to a gentle death, 
like a sleep. As for Antony, like Cato and Brutus, 
he had his sword. 

In the midst of these preparations for defense and 
for death the vanquished of Actium sought to nego- 
tiate with their conqueror. Octavius, recalled to Rome 
by a threatened sedition of the veterans, had in the 
course of the winter gone to Syria, where he was 
concentrating his forces. Antony wrote to him; he 
reminded him of his former friendship, recalled his 
services, made excuses for the wrongs he had done, 
and ended by promising to lay down his arms on 
condition of being allowed to live as a private citizen 
at Alexandria. Octavius deigned no reply, nor did 
he reply to a second letter in which he offered to kill 
himself, provided that Cleopatra might continue to 
reign over Egypt. The queen on her side, and un- 
known to Antony, despatched an envoy to Octavius 
with rich gifts. Less generous than her lover, who had 
offered his life to secure her crown, she separated his 
cause from her own. The Egyptian envoy repre- 
sented to Octavius that his hatred of Antony ought 
not to include the queen, who had had no part in the 
late events. It was Rome, said he, that declared war 
on Egypt, to bring matters to a close with Antony. 
8* 



90 CLEOPATRA. 

Was not Cleopatra compelled to arm in her own de- 
fense ? But now that Antony is overcome, compelled to 
exile or suicide, the Romans may safely show mercy to 
Cleopatra and leave her on the throne. That is far 
more to their interest than to force this powerful queen 
to a desperate struggle. 

Octavius already considered himself the master of 
Egypt — and of the world. He feared but little the bro- 
ken sword in the hand of Antony, still less the shat- 
tered remains of the army of Cleopatra and the wrecks 
of her navy. But there were two things still beyond 
his power — all powerful emperor as he was — the 
immense treasures of Cleopatra, on which he had 
reckoned to pay his legionaries, and Cleopatra herself, 
whom he wished to grace his triumph; she might 
escape the Roman by death and her treasure by fire. 
Traitors and spies were not lacking in Alexandria; 
and Octavius knew, through their reports, of the 
queen's experiments in poisons as well as that she 
had collected all her treasures in her future tomb. 
He was compelled to employ cunning with the 
Egyptian, and, believing himself justified by the words 
of her ambassador to propose such a step, he declared 
that if the queen would compass Antony's death she 
should preserve her sovereignty. Some days after, 
fearful that this somewhat savage diplomacy might 
not prevail with Cleopatra, he despatched to her 
Thyreus, his freedman. In Egypt, Thyreus talked 
openly before the court and Antony of the resent- 
ment of Octavius and of his severe decrees, but having 
obtained without difficulty a secret audience of Cleo- 



CLEOPATRA. 91 

patra he told her that he had been charged by his 
master to repeat his assurances that she had nothing 
to fear. To satisfy her of this, he pretended to confide 
to her that she was beloved by Octavius as of old by 
Caesar and Antony. Cleopatra had 'many interviews 
with Thyreus and publicly showed him much friend- 
liness. Antony took the alarm, and, suspicious of 
Cleopatra whether as woman or queen, he made use 
of what power was left him to avenge himself on 
Thyreus, and in spite of his character as ambassador 
he had him beaten with rods and sent him back bleed- 
ing to his master. The anger of Antony proves that 
Cleopatra had not listened with inattentive ears to the 
communications of Thyreus. A woman readily be- 
/lieves this sort of declaration, especially when she has 
I been much beloved. It is true that Cleopatra was 
then thirty-seven years old, but had she any less 
confidence in her ever-victorious charms? It is also 
true that Octavius had never seen her, unless, per- 
haps, thirteen years before, at Rome, after the death 
of Caesar ; but did not the universal fame of her 
attractions suffice to inspire, if not exactly love, at 
least a vague desire and an ardent and eager curi- 
osity ? Cleopatra had loved Antony passionately, but 
this love had been aroused, strengthened, and exalted 
as much by the glory and power of the triumvir as by 
his manly beauty and strength. Now Antony was 
conquered, a fugitive, betrayed by his friends, deserted 
by his legions; himself hopeless and dispirited he 
seemed to bow to his fate. His absurd retreat to 
the Timonion after the battle of Actium, while she, 



92 CLEOPATRA. 

seized with a feverish activity, was preparing every- 
thing for a final effort, had inspired more scorn than 
pity in the heart of the queen. Women neither/ 
understand nor can they forgive those perilous mo-lj 
ments of depression which at certain times overcome! 
the bravest. Little as was the love she still bore 
Antony, and anxious as she might be about the reve- 
lations made by Thyreus, Cleopatra never thought 
for a moment of having Antony slain, or of giving 
him up to Octavius; but what, perhaps, she could 
not help hoping was, that Antony, his life threatened 
in Alexandria, forsaken by his last legionaries, and 
having no other than Egyptian troops of doubtful 
fidelity, would flee into Numidia or Spain and thus 
deliver her from her embarrassments. 

About the middle of the spring of 30 B. C. news 
reached Alexandria that a Roman army had crossed 
the western frontier of Egypt. Antony collected a 
few troops and marched to meet the enemy. A battle 
was fought beneath the walls of the strong city of 
Praetonium, which was already in the hands of the 
Romans. Antony, with his handful of men, was. 
repulsed. When he returned to Alexandria Octavius 
was within two days' march of the city. Whilst his 
lieutenant, Cornelius Gallus, was penetrating into 
Egypt by Cyrenaica he himself had entered through 
Syria and had taken Pelusium, after a real or feigned 
resistance, in either case a very brief one. After the 
surrender of Pelusium, the last of the Romans who 
had remained faithful to Antony cried out treason, 
declaring that Seleucus had surrendered the city by 



CLEOPATRA. 93 

the orders of Cleopatra herself. Is it true that the 
queen had given such instructions? It may be 
doubted; nevertheless, Cleopatra's trouble of mind 
and her secret hopes give a color to these suspi- 
cions. To vindicate herself she gave up to Antony 
the wife and children of Seleucus, and proposed that 
he should put them to death. This was but a very 
doubtful proof of her innocence, but Antony had to 
be satisfied with it. His anger subsided before her 
protestations and tears, true or false ; now was not 
the time for recriminations : he must fight. Octavius 
had pitched his camp on the heights about twenty 
stadia east of Alexandria. Antony, having led in 
person a strong reconnoitering body of cavalry in that 
direction, fell in, not far from the Hippodrome, with 
the whole body of the Roman cavalry. A furious 
battle was fought in which, notwithstanding their 
great superiority of numbers, the Romans were broken 
and utterly routed. Antony pursued them to their 
entrenchments; then he returned to the city, strength- 
ened by this victory, of little importance indeed, but 
brilliant and of good augury. He sprang from his 
horse before the palace, and, without taking time to 
lay aside his armor, rushed, still wearing helmet and 
cuirass, and covered with the blood and sweat of the 
fight, to embrace Cleopatra. She, deceiving herself 
as to the importance of this skirmish, felt her love and 
her hopes at the same time revive. She had again 
found her Antony, her emperor, her god of war. She 
threw herself passionately on his neck, wounding her 
breasts against his cuirass. At this moment of sincere 



94 CLEOPATRA. 

feeling she must have reproached herself grievously (if 
she had committed it) with the treason of Pelusium ; 
and the confidences which she had accepted from the 
envoy of Octavius must have recurred to her as a bit- 
ter remorse. Cleopatra desired to review the troops. 
She made them a speech, and, having had the brav- 
est of them pointed out to her, she gave him a 
complete armor of solid gold. 

Antony, restored to hope, no longer contemplated 
negotiating, and the same day sent a herald to Octavius 
to invite him to decide their quarrel by single combat 
in sight of the two armies. Octavius replied disdainfully 
that there was more than one other way for Antony 
to seek death. This speech, that marked so great 
assurance in his enemy, struck Antony as a fatal omen. 
Suddenly, dashed from his chimerical hopes, he felt 
his situation in all its gloomy reality. Resolved, 
nevertheless, the next day to fight one last battle, he 
ordered a sumptuous feast. " To-morrow,' ' said he, 
" it will, perhaps, be too late ! " The supper was sad 
as a funeral banquet; the few friends that were faithful 
to him maintained a gloomy silence, some even wept. 
Antony, simulating a confidence which he did not feel, 
said to them to revive their sinking spirits : " Think not 
that to-morrow I shall only seek a glorious death ; I 
shall fight for life and victory." At daybreak, while the 
troops were taking up their position before the Roman 
camp, and the Egyptian fleet, which was to support 
the action by attacking that of Octavius, was doubling 
Cape Lochias, Antony posted himself on an emi- 
nence whence he commanded both the plain and the 



CLEOPATRA, 95 

sea. The Egyptian vessels advanced in battle array 
against the Roman Liburnians, but, when within two 
arrow-flights, the rowers raised high in air their long 
oars in salute. The salute was returned by the 
Romans, and immediately the two fleets, mingling and 
making now but one, sailed into the port together. 
Almost at the same moment Antony sees his cavalry, — 
that cavalry which the day previous had fought with 
such intrepidity, — move without orders and pass over to 
Octavius. In the Roman lines the trumpets sounded 
the onset; the legions dashed forward with their accus- 
tomed war-cry: " Comminus / Corntninus!" (Hand-to- 
hand ! ) The infantry of Antony did not wait the shock 
— it broke and rushed towards the city, dragging their 
leader in the midst of the rout. Antony, mad with 
rage, uttering threats and curses, striking the fugitives 
indifferently with the blade and the flat of his sword, re- 
entered Alexandria exclaiming that he was betrayed by 
Cleopatra, given up by this woman to those with whom 
he had fought solely for love of her. 

Cleopatra had no longer the power either to betray 
or to save Antony; for she, the "New Goddess," the 
" Queen of Kings," she, too, was abandoned by her 
people, as he, the great captain, was deserted by his 
army. Their cause was lost, who would be faithful to 
it? During the preceding day and night, Octavius's 
emissaries had worked upon the legionaries and the 
Egyptians, promising to the former amnesty, to the 
latter safety. The valiant soldier on whom Cleopatra 
the day before had bestowed the golden suit of armor 
had not even waited for the morning to pass into 



96 CLEOPATRA. 

the Roman camp ; that very night he had deserted I 
At the sight of the fugitives rushing like a torrent into 
the city, Cleopatra is overcome with terror. She is 
aware of the suspicions of Antony, she knows his 
terrible fits of rage. Already she is familiar with the 
idea of death, but she desires a more easy death, a 
death the sister of sleep. She shudders and revolts at 
the thought of Antony's sword; she has a vision of 
hideous wounds in her person, her breast, perhaps her 
face. As for attempting to calm his fury, she has 
neither strength nor courage for that. Desperate, she 
quits the palace with Iras and Charm ion, and with- 
draws to her tomb, of which she has the door closed ; 
and, to prevent Antony's attempting to force this 
refuge, she gives orders to tell him she is no more. 1 
Antony, rushing like a madman about the deserted 
apartments of the palace, learns the news. His anger 
dissolves in tears: " What more have you to expect, 
Antony? " exclaimed he, "Fortune robs you of the only 
blessing which made life dear." He commands his 
freedman Eros to slay him ; then, unfastening his 
cuirass, he addresses this last adieu to Cleopatra : " O, 
Cleopatra ! I do not complain that thou art taken from 
me, since in a moment I shall rejoin thee." Eros, 
meanwhile, has drawn his sword, but instead of striking 

i Dion says that Cleopatra betrayed Antony at Alexandria, as 
at Pelusium, and that she sent him word of her death that he 
might be urged to commit suicide, and his body given up to Oc- 
tavius. Once for all, we take for authority Plutarch, who seems 
much more worthy of credit. The taking of Alexandria was on 
August i, 30 B. c. 



CLEOPATRA. 97 

Antony, he stabs himself. " Brave Eros," said An- 
tony, seeing him fall dead at his feet, " you set me the 
example ! " and, thrusting the sword into his breast, he 
sinks fainting upon a couch. 

In a few minutes he recovers consciousness. He 
calls and entreats the slaves, the soldiers, to put an end 
to him, but none dare to comply, and he is left alone, 
howling and struggling on the couch. Meanwhile the 
queen has been informed of the fact. Her grief is 
bitter and profound — the more bitter that it is mingled 
with remorse. She must see Antony again ; she com- 
mands that he be brought, dead or alive. Diomedes, 
her secretary, hastens to the palace. Antony is at the 
last gasp, but the joy at hearing that the queen is not 
dead revives him, and "he rises," says Dion Cassius, 
" as if he might still live ! " Slaves bear him in their 
arms, and, to hasten their movements, he utters en- 
treaties, invectives, threats, which mingle with the 
death-rattle. They reach the tomb ; the queen leans 
from a window of the upper story ; fearing a surprise, she 
will not have the portcullis raised, but she throws down 
some ropes, and commands them to be fastened round 
Antony. Then, aided by Iras and Charmion, the only 
ones she has allowed to enter the mausoleum, she begins 
to drag him up. * ' It was not easy, " says Plutarch, ' ' for 
women thus to lift a man of Antony's size." Never, 
say those who witnessed it, was a sadder or more pitiful 
sight. Cleopatra, with arms stiff and brow contracted, 
dragged painfully at the ropes, whilst Antony, bleed- 
ing and dying, raised himself as much as possible, ex- 
tending towards her his dying hands. 
9 



98 CLE OP A TEA. 

At last he reached her, and they laid him on a bed, 
where she long held him in a close embrace. Her 
grief spent itself in tears, in sobs, in despairing kisses. 
She called him her husband, her master, her emperor ; 
she struck her breast, tore it with her nails, then again 
casting herself upon him, she kissed his wound, wiping 
off on her face the blood that flowed from it. Antony 
endeavored to calm and console her, and entreated 
her to care for her own safety. Burning with fever, 
he begged for a drink, and swallowed a cup of wine. 
Death was rapidly approaching. Cleopatra renewed 
her lamentations. "Do not grieve," said he, "for 
this last misfortune ; rather congratulate me for the 
blessings I have enjoyed in my life, and the happiness 
that has been mine in being the most powerful and 
illustrious of men; congratulate me on this, that, being 
a Roman, none but a Roman has conquered me." He 
expired in the arms of Cleopatra, dying, as Shakspeare 
says, where he had wished to live. 

When Octavius heard of Antony's death, he de- 
spatched Proculeius and G alius with orders to seize 
Cleopatra before she could have time to kill herself. 
Their calls attracted the attention of the queen ; she 
descended and began to parley with them from behind 
the portcullis. Deaf to the promises and protestations 
of the two Romans, Cleopatra declared that she would 
only surrender if Octavius would agree by oath to 
maintain her or her son on the throne of Egypt ; other- 
wise Caesar should have but her dead body. Proc- 
uleius, espying the window which had admitted 
Antony, left his companion to converse alone with the 



CLEOPATRA. 99 

queen, and, finding a ladder, placed it against the 
thick wall, and thus entering the tomb, he descended 
the staircase within and sprang upon Cleopatra. Char- 
mion, turning at the noise, exclaimed: " Unhappy 
queen, thou art taken alive ! " Cleopatra snatched 
from her girdle a dagger which for some time she had 
carried in order to kill herself, but Proculeius seized 
her wrist and only allowed her to free herself after 
being assured that she had no other weapon and 
no suspicious phial about her. He then resumed the 
respectful attitude demanded by the rank and misfor- 
tunes of the royal captive. He assured her she had 
nothing to fear from Octavius. " O, Queen," said he, 
" you are unjust towards Caesar, whom you would rob 
of the noblest opportunity of exercising clemency." 

Her treasures and her person in the power of the 
Romans, Cleopatra felt herself without the means of 
defense. What availed it that Caesar left her her life, 
since henceforth she desired only to die? The only 
favor she asked was to be allowed to pay funeral honors 
to Antony. Although the same request had already 
been made by the captains of his army who had served 
under Antony, Octavius, touched with compassion, 
granted the prayer of the Egyptian. Cleopatra bathed 
the body of her lover, adorned and armed it as for a 
last battle, then she laid it in the tomb which she had 
built for herself and in which she had vainly sought 
death. After the obsequies the queen was conducted, by 
order of Octavius, to the palace of the Lagidae. There 
she was treated with every attention, but she was, so to 
speak, never lost sight of (a prisoner forever watched). 



ioo CLEOPATRA. 

The terrible emotions through which Cleopatra had 
passed, the intense grief which overwhelmed her, above 
all the wounds she had inflicted on herself during the 
death-struggle of Antony, brought on an inflammation 
of the chest, attended by a burning fever. In this 
illness she saw the hoped-for death, and to hasten her 
deliverance she refused for many days all medical 
treatment and all food. Octavius was informed of this, 
and he sent her word that she must have forgotten that 
he held her four children as hostages, and that their 
lives should answer for hers. This horrid threat over- 
came the resolution of Cleopatra, who then consented 
to be properly cared for. 

Octavius meanwhile felt he had cause for disquiet. 
What if the pride of the queen overpowered her 
motherly instincts ? what if the horror of gracing as 
a captive his approaching triumph should decide 
her to a self-inflicted death? Doubtless she was well 
guarded, but what negligence or what treason might 
he not fear ? Besides, though without arms or poison, 
might she not induce the faithful Charm ion to 
strangle her? "Now Octavius," so says Dion Cas- 
sius, "conceived that the death of Cleopatra would 
have robbed him of his glory." He resolved, there- I 
fore, to see her. He knew he possessed sufficient self- 
control not to become entangled, and believed himself 
sufficiently skillful to keep the queen uncertain of the 
fate to which he destined her. 

Cleopatra was no longer deceived as to the pre- ) 
tended sentiments of love with which, according to 
Thyreus, she had inspired Octavius; of this we are 



CLEOPATRA. 101 

assured by Plutarch. Since the emperor's arrival in l 
Alexandria he had not even expressed the intention 
of seeing her, and the harsh treatment, the rigorous 
seclusion, and the savage threats which she had to 
endure from him did not certainly indicate a man 
in love. Can it be said, however, that the prospect 
of the unexpected visit of Octavius aroused in Cleo- 
patra, desperate as she was, no glimpse of hope, no 
fugitive vision of a throne, no last enthusiasm ? that 
from her beautiful eyes shot no ray of half-seen 
triumph ? 

The queen, scarcely convalescent, was in bed when 
Octavius entered. She sprang from the couch, 
though wearing only a tunic, and knelt before him. 
At the sight of this woman, worn out by fever, 
emaciated, dreadfully pale, with drawn features, eyes 
sunken and red with tears, bearing on her face 
and breast the marks made by her own hands, 
Octavius found it hard to believe that this was the 
enchantress that had captivated Caesar and enslaved 
Mark Antony ; but had Cleopatra been more beauti- 
ful than Venus he would not have been her lover. 
Continence was not among his virtues, but he was 
too prudent and too clever ever to sacrifice his inter- 
ests to his passions. He urged the queen to return 
to her couch, and seated himself near her. Cleopatra 
began to vindicate herself, referring all that had 
passed to the force of circumstances and the fear 
she felt of Antony. She often ceased speaking, 
interrupted by her choking sobs ; then, in the hope 
of moving Octavius to pity (of seducing him, some 
o* 



102 CLEOPATRA. 

say), she drew from her bosom some of Caesar's let- 
ters, kissed them, and exclaimed : " Wouldst thou 
know how thy father loved me, read these letters . . . 
Oh ! Caesar ! why did I not die before thee ! . . . but 
for me you live again in this man ! " and through her I 
tears she essayed to smile at Octavius. Lamentable I 
scene of coquetry, which the wretched woman no longer ( 
could or knew how to play. 

To her sighs, her moans, the emperor made no 
reply, even avoiding looking at her and keeping his 
eyes fixed on the floor. He spoke only to reply, 
one by one, to all the arguments by which the queen 
sought to justify herself. Chilled by the impassi- 
bility of this man, who, without being at all moved 
by her misfortunes and her sufferings, was arguing 
with her like a schoolmaster, Cleopatra felt that she 
had nothing to hope. Again death appeared as the 
only liberator. Then she ceased her pleas, dried her 
tears, and, in order completely to deceive Octavius, 
she pretended to be resigned to everything, provided 
her life was spared. She handed him the list of her 
treasures, and entreated him to permit her to retain 
certain jewels that she might present them herself to 
Livia and Octavia in order to secure their protection. 
"Take courage, O woman ! " said the emperor as 
he left her. "Be hopeful; no harm shall happen to 
you ! " 

Deceived by the pretended resignation of Cleo- 
patra, Octavius no longer doubted that he would 
be able to exhibit to the Roman rabble the haughty 
queen of Egypt walking in chains before his tri- 



CLEOPATRA. 103 

umphal car. He had not heard, as he|left her, the 
last word uttered by Cleopatra, that word which, since 
the taking of Alexandria, she had incessantly re- 
peated: 01 6pia]4k6co/xa'. ! "I will not contribute to 
his triumph." 1 

A few days after this interview, an intimate com- 
panion of Octavius, taking pity on such dire reverses, 
secretly revealed to Cleopatra that the next day she 
would be embarked for Rome. She asked to be 
allowed to go with her women to offer libations at the 
tomb of Antony. She was borne thither in a litter, 
being still too weak to walk. After pouring the wine 
and adjusting the crowns she kissed for the last 
time the sepulchral stone, saying: " O, beloved An- 
tony, if thy gods have any power — for mine have 
betrayed me — do not abandon thy living wife. Do 
not let thyself be triumphed over, by making her at 
Rome take part in a disgraceful show. Hide me with 
thee under this earth of Egypt." 

On her return, Cleopatra went to the bath; her 
women arrayed her in her most magnificent robes, 
dressed her hair with care, and adjusted her royal 
crown. Cleopatra had ordered a splendid repast; her 
toilet ended, she was placed at the table. A country- 
man entered, carrying a basket. A soldier of the guard 
desiring to see the contents, the man opened it and 
showed some figs; and, the guard exclaiming at the 
beauty of them, he offered them some to taste. His 

1 The peculiar force of this verb in the passive form cannot be 
fitly rendered in a translation. It is, word for word, " I will not 
be triumphed." 



io4 CLEOPATRA. 

good nature lulled all suspicion; he was allowed to 
pass. Cleopatra received the basket, sent to Octavius 
a letter she had written in the morning, and was then 
left alone with Iras and Charmion. She opened the 
basket and separated the figs, hoping to be stung un- 
awares, but the reptile was asleep. Cleopatra discov- 
ered it beneath the figs. " There it is, then ! " cried 
she, and began to rouse it with a golden pin. The 
asp bit her on the arm. 

Warned by the letter of Cleopatra, Octavius sent in 
haste to the apartments. His officers found the guards 
at their post, ignorant of what had occurred. They 
forced the door and beheld Cleopatra, clad in her royal 
robes, lying lifeless on her golden couch, and at her 
feet the corpse of Iras. Charmion was still alive ; lean- 
ing over Cleopatra, she was arranging with her dying 
hands the diadem around the head of the queen. A 
soldier exclaimed in a voice of wrath: "Is this well 
done, Charmion ? " " Yes," said the dying Charmion, 
"it is well done, and worthy of a queen, the descen- 
dant of so many kings ! " 

Octavius put to death Caesarion, the son of Caesar 
and Cleopatra, but he was merciful to the dead body of 
the queen. Granting the mournful prayer she had 
made to him in her last letter, he permitted her to be 
buried beside Antony. He also granted honorable 
burial to the faithful slaves, Charmion and Iras, who 
had accompanied their mistress to the world of shadows. 

By her suicide, Cleopatra escaped contributing to the 
triumph of Octavius, 1 but failing her person he had 
1 Cleopatra died the 15th of August, 30 B. C. 



CLEOPATRA. 105 

her effigy, and the statue of Cleopatra with a serpent 
wound about her arm was borne in the triumphal pro- 
cession. Does it not seem that the statue of this illus- 
trious queen, who had subdued the greatest of the 
Romans, who had made Rome tremble, and who pre- 
ferred death to assisting at her own humiliation, had 
by her death triumphed over her conqueror, and still 
defied the senate and the people on the way to the 
Capitol ? 

We can easily conceive of Cleopatra as a great 
queen, the rival of the mythic Semiramis, and the 
elder sister of the Zenobias, the Isabellas, the Maria- 
Theresas, and the Catharines ; but, in truth, only those 
queens are great who possess manly virtues, who rule 
nations and compel events as a great king might do. 
Cleopatra was too essentially a woman to be reckoned 
among these glorious androgynuses. If for twenty 
years she preserved her throne and maintained the 
independence of Egypt, it was done by mere womanly 
means — intrigue, gallantry, grace, and weakness 
which is also a grace. Her sole method of governing 
was, in reality, by becoming the mistress of Caesar 
and the mistress of Mark Antony. It was the Roman 
sword that sustained the throne of the Lagidae. When 
by the fault of Cleopatra the weapon was broken, the 
throne tottered and fell. Ambition, her only royal 
virtue, would have been limited to the exercise of her 
hereditary government if circumstances had not de- 
veloped and exalted it. 

Knowing herself weak, without genius and without 
mental force, she reckoned wholly on her lovers for the 









106 CLEOPATRA. 

accomplishment of her designs, and it too often hap- 
pened to this woman, fatal to others as to herself, to 
retard the execution of these, dominated, as she ever 
was, by the imperious desire of some entertainment 
or some pleasure. This queen had the recklessness of 
the courtesan ; women of gallantry might have con- 
sidered her their august and tragic ancestress. She 
only lived for love, pomp, and magnificence; where- 
fore, when her lover was slain, her beauty marred, her 
wealth lost, and her crown shattered, she found, to face 
death, the masculine courage which had failed her 
in life. 

No, Cleopatra was not a great queen. But for her 
connection with Antony, she would be forgotten with 
Arsinoe or Berenice. If her renown is immortal, it is 
because she is the heroine of the most dramatic love- 
story of antiquity. 




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